


The Play's the Thing

by Footloose



Series: Loaded March [9]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:38:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 83,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Footloose/pseuds/Footloose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Directory throws a wrench in Excalibur's plans against the NWO, and it looks like their assignment has come to an end.  Luckily, the NWO is eager to get their claws into Arthur and Merlin any way they can, but that's not going to happen under anyone's terms but their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the characters to Merlin(TV) and am not profiting from this work.
> 
> This is part nine in the Loaded March series, and it has been partially beta'ed. Any mistakes, however, are solely my own.
> 
> Fair warning: this is a military fic, and there will be military violence.
> 
>  
> 
> Feel free to friend Loaded_March (on LJ) for progress reports on new parts of the series. There may also be random snippets and news of other fics I'm working on.

* * *

"So I hear there's a pillock I need to shoot dead," Will said, his tone as casual-smooth as if he were talking about the weather.

Merlin staggered to a stop and stared at his phone for a blinding, confusing second. Arthur, who had been running alongside Merlin, slowed down and stopped, frowning; Gwaine detoured around Merlin, kept running, and did a little prancing turn-around before joining them in the shade of an oak tree. Perceval took the opportunity to stretch his leg out; he'd been muttering about a hamstring cramp for the last kilometre.

"Who is it?" Arthur asked. 

_Sorry --_ , Merlin mouthed. His breathing came in jagged hitches. "Will! Shouldn't you be on the range by now? Also, what?"

"Jesus. Are you breathing hard? Were you fucking? Tell me you weren't fucking. No, wait. When were you going to tell me that you're fucking _Arthur Pendragon_?" Will somehow managed to convey the subtle nuance of _you know he's your bloody Captain, yeah? Are you trying to get yourself kicked out of the Army?_ in the bile that dripped from Arthur's name.

Merlin ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair. "Will, I --"

"I mean, really? Something wrong with your fingers? You don't know how to dial a phone anymore? What about sending an email? I have to hear from Freya how you nearly got killed at a party in Algiers? And there's a _bloody video of it_? What were you doing there anyway, other than playing eye candy to Arthur fucking Pendragon?"

"Will --" Merlin's eyes were round, and he waved Arthur over, because -- well, he didn't know what for, really, other than the fact that Freya had called Will and had told him everything and now Will _knew_ that things weren't on the up-and-up and their cover stories might just be blown. Will might be a sniper, but he wasn't exactly known for his indiscretion.

"And now you're hanging out with Freya and, of all the bloody plonkers in London, with _Bryn_?"

Merlin swallowed hard. It had every bit to do with the way Arthur pulled at his damp T-shirt and wiped the sweat from his brow, the muscles in his arms and chest rippling from the movement. For a minute, he nearly forgot that Will was on the phone, yelling at him, telling Merlin that he knew what was going on (even if he didn't, not really), and the Directory's gross negligence in making sure that _people were keeping their gobs shut_ ran the risk that they could all be killed at any time. At Arthur's frown, Merlin covered the mouthpiece of his cell phone and said, "It's Will. I think Freya called him and --"

A stormy expression shadowed Arthur's features. A bare second later, Arthur blanched in understanding. Arthur reached out for the phone, but Merlin shook his head and batted his hand away. Gwaine and Perceval closed ranks, and the early morning runners wove around them until they cleared the path.

"Will!" This time, Merlin's shout silenced his friend. It also silenced Merlin, because he didn't know what to say. 

Will, taking advantage, paused long enough to regroup and ask, "And where the fuck are you, anyway? I sent you a million texts. You were supposed to come and pick me up --"

"What? Pick you up?" Merlin glanced at his phone, and, sure enough, there were four text messages from Will, all of them having come in within the last hour. Even if they weren't "officially" in the army anymore, the team was still in training. Arthur wanted to keep everyone in shape whether they liked it or not -- he had dragged Merlin out of bed more than one morning in a row for exactly that reason. Merlin scrolled down the screen, but couldn't read the texts, because Will was _still talking_.

"Are you going to pick me up or what? I'm at the Euston station --"

"Oh, shite," Merlin said, bringing his hand to his forehead. He started pacing.

"-- where I've been cooling my arse for the last twenty, and if you don't come pick me up or tell me where to go, I'm going to call Freya next and --"

Arthur stepped right in Merlin's path, stopping him from blindly walking into the busy morning traffic. "What is he saying?"

"He's in town," Merlin said. "Euston station."

"Are you talking to the plonker right now? Kindly remind him of our chat at the pub --"

"This isn't happening," Merlin said, shaking his head, and Arthur took the phone out of his hand. Merlin rubbed his face and continued to pace. Who else was Freya calling? Had she called his Mum? Oh, God. If it Freya hadn't called his Mum, then it would be probably Will, telling his Mum what was going on, that Merlin had shacked up with someone who _hurt_ him, and that was absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent _not true_.

Merlin was going to have to tell his Mum, now, or else she was going to beat him to within an inch of his life for keeping his relationship with Arthur from her --

"Will," Arthur said. "What do you want?"

Merlin couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, and he wasn't entirely certain that he wanted to, but he sidled close to Arthur, taking Arthur's wrist to tilt the phone enough for Merlin to hear.

"I warned you what were going to happen if you hurt Merlin," Will was saying. "And I thought you were smart enough to listen to me, but then you go and beat him. Gave him a shiner, didn't you? And don't you fucking dare deny it, because I got a witness who says she saw the bruises --"

"I distinctly recall your telling me that I wouldn't see you coming if you got wind of something of this sort happening," Arthur said, his voice even, and Merlin wanted to know _how he could be so bloody calm_ when their mission, their _lives_ was about to get flushed down the loo, and all because Freya had a big gob, and Will was so bloody overprotective. "So maybe you understand my confusion. Why are you bothering to give me a warning?"

"I want to hear it from Merlin," Will said, his voice taking on a dangerous edge, just like it had every time Will had spoken to Walsh after that mission cock-up a couple of years back that nearly eradicated Merlin's entire team. "I want to see him myself. You're getting a free pass today only because I've been told that Merlin says you didn't hit him, that he walked into a bloody fucking door -- which, _I know you're listening in, Merlin_ is such a fucking lame bit of bollocks of an excuse --"

"Euston station, wasn't it?" Arthur said amiably. "I'll have someone pick you up."

"You damn well better have --" 

Arthur cut the conversation short by hanging up on Will. He sighed softly, and used Merlin's phone to make a call.

"Kay? You remember Will? Merlin's friend? He's at Euston. Get him and bring him to the house, and for the love of God, _frisk_ him first, make sure he's not holding." Arthur waited for confirmation, nodded mostly to himself, and hung up, returning the phone.

Merlin checked the messages, and, sure enough, the texts from Will were all demands that Merlin miraculously appear _this instant_ to pick him up from the station, and a threat that if he didn't answer his phone soon, Will wasn't going to wait for an explanation before going to hunt Arthur down until he was good and dead.

"Shite. Arthur --"

"Let's go," Arthur said, and except for the fine sheen of sweat on his skin that had him glowing like a burnished sun God -- which was quite _unfair_ , because Merlin knew he didn't look much better than a drowned rat before, during, and after a run -- Arthur didn't seem the least bit perturbed.

"But --"

Arthur's hand snaked behind Merlin's neck and shoved him along until Merlin ran under his own power. Merlin stuffed his phone in his pocket, zipping it up so that it wouldn't fall out, and tried again. "It's Will, and he's not going to --"

"I'm not worried about Will," Arthur said. Gwaine and Perceval were behind them, close enough to listen in on the conversation. It wasn't quite the full team running through the park, but the four of them caught the eye of more than one female jogger, a couple of whom were brazen enough to whistle at them.

Gwaine, of course, whistled back.

"Maybe Will didn't make the problem clear enough," Merlin said. "He's going to _shoot_ you --"

" _Mer_ lin. Shut up."

"But --"

"If you still have breath to talk, you're not working hard enough," Arthur growled. He picked that moment to increase the speed, leaving Merlin to scramble after him until he caught up. For the first few minutes, Merlin was too busy making certain he didn't trip over the loose cobblestones or slip on the wet grass to consider the implication of Will being in town. As soon as he was besides Arthur again and could focus on something other than the immediate panic of the world going to shite, he glanced at Arthur and realized that Arthur _really wasn't worried_.

Which was worrisome in itself.

"Do you know something I don't?" Merlin managed to gasp out, but Arthur only glanced at him, raised a brow, and increased speed again.

Gwaine, behind them, groaned, and Perceval said something rude that Merlin didn't catch over the pounding footfalls.

"Who are you punishing here? Us or him?" Gwaine protested.

"The lot of you," Arthur said, more amused than anything else -- and hardly sounding as if he'd been running at a damn-near sprint for the last ten minutes. Thankfully, he slowed down as they approached the corner that would lead them back to the flat, and instead of stopping, took them for another loop.

"Oh, fuck me, mate --," Perceval began, only to be interrupted by Gwaine.

"I've been _trying_ \--" Gwaine caught Perceval's glare, and held up his hands. "Sorry. I thought you were talking to me."

"You know, I liked training better when we were on base," Perceval said, and Merlin didn't blame him. Now that they were in London and had settled into a routine, Arthur took every excuse he could to push them to work harder. The team was expected to follow a physical training routine on their own, and were to show up at regular martial arts training -- not the Krav Maga with Morowitz, _thank fuck_ , but Aikido and Kendo this time -- twice a week. They had hours booked at the gun range every Sunday morning, regular team meetings on Friday nights, and when they weren't working or training, they were _studying_.

Maps, inventories, weapon stores, escape routes, plans. Always with the plans.

Merlin was tired of memorizing the bloody spellbooks on his e-reader. He was certain he could recite it forward and backward if he had to.

When Arthur had started _quizzing_ him on the different variations of the _astute_ spell, Merlin had tossed the e-Reader at him and had stormed out of the room. "It's like we don't have our own lives anymore!"

The truth was, anyone who was pulling bodyguard duty for Arthur, Merlin, Morgana, and Gwen (a precaution that Lance was grateful for, even if Gwen didn't appreciate it) had at least some leeway in their schedules for a social life. But the team spent so much time together before they were a team, it was hard for them to actually _have_ a life when it was all that they had ever known.

The team was almost always within a few blocks of each other at any given time. A few of them had flats in the same building, Leon and Lance were a stone's throw away. Gwaine was interested in being where Perceval was and Perceval was happy to crash in one of the guest rooms at Arthur's flat. Kay couldn't be arsed to find himself a flat and refused to live with his foster-sister who had a two-bedroom in town, so he'd taken over one of the other bedrooms a few doors away from Perceval's. Bohrs, who had softened up a little bit after the whole _Merlin has magic_ issue, though he still looked at Merlin with quiet, doubtful speculation -- it seemed like he never went home.

Because everyone was so conveniently close, their social lives were mostly spent watching footie on someone's telly, crowding the nearby bar, or avoiding Arthur when he started to twitch and get fidgety, because that meant he was bored and wanted to burn off excess energy with another training round.

Merlin was usually able to distract him with an impromptu shag.

The loop around the park was completed in silence, and Merlin snuck several glances in Arthur's direction, still trying to divine the why behind his complete lack of concern that Will was in town and was coming to the flat and was probably going to do something both drastic and outrageous and requiring police intervention that would blow their covers all to hell. They slowed down when they left the park and jogged to the flat, Perceval going in ahead to check with Bohrs that all was clear before they went inside.

"Run a check of the premises," Arthur said, pulling off his shirt, and Merlin's eyes were glued to those beautifully-sculpted shoulders until Arthur turned around and snapped him out of his daze. There was a faint, fleeting smirk on Arthur's lips. "Check upstairs first. We're expecting a guest, and I need to shower."

" _We_ need to shower," Merlin said distractedly. His eyes trailed down the curve of Arthur's back and rested on his arse, and it was really _unfair_ the way those shorts hugged his hips and thighs. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his running vest and tried not to squirm when Arthur's eyes raked him over.

No matter how much he wanted to ask questions and demand to know why Arthur was being so bloody _calm_ , Merlin kept his mouth shut. He knew very well what it meant when Arthur said to _run a check_. It wasn't just for intruders. It was for anything out of place, an indication that someone had been in the house while they were away, a hint that they were under surveillance, electronic or otherwise. They hadn't found any bugs in the house, but more than once, they had spotted someone sitting in the driver's seat of a car that didn't belong on the street.

Merlin should know. He'd memorized every car on the road, every license plate. He could name the people living in most of the houses and how old their kids were and how they were doing in school -- for someone who came home only very rarely on R&R over the last few years, Arthur knew an obnoxious amount about his neighbours.

"Clear," Bohrs said, coming down the stairs with a device in his hand that Merlin had built for detecting bugs, passing it on to Perceval to sweep the main floor while he headed outside to walk the neighbourhood for strangers. Gwaine headed for the kitchen, helping himself to a glass of water, smirking as Arthur headed up to the bedroom and Merlin trailed after him.

"Arthur --"

"No, I don't know anything," Arthur said, pushing him back against the door so hard that the door slammed shut, smothering Merlin with kisses and robbing him of speech. He didn't manage to say anything until Arthur moved to mouth at his jaw and neck, and even then, it came out as an incoherent jumble that Arthur interpreted correctly, because he said, "It's obvious that something's up. The timing is just too perfect. We won't find out what's going on until Will gets here --"

Arthur unzipped Merlin's vest and pushed it over his shoulders, trapping his arms behind his back. Arthur pulled at Merlin's shirt roughly, and Merlin gasped to feel rough fingers washing over his chest. Every single complaint that Merlin had at being dragged out of bed without the opportunity to do something about the inevitable early-morning wood bubbled up to the surface again.

"We could've done this before we went running --"

"Could've," Arthur agreed, pulling down on Merlin's shorts. Merlin's arms were trapped by his vest and his shirt and he couldn't help squirming when Arthur rubbed his hardening cock. "You're the one who kept complaining that you wanted to _sleep_. I let you sleep in a bit, didn't I?"

"You did," Merlin grumbled. He fought valiantly against his bound arms, which only served to make Arthur stop and watch him wriggle.

"Honestly, _Mer_ lin, you'd think I keep you up all night --"

"Gwaine thinks you do --"

"We're not talking about Gwaine right now," Arthur said, with a stern finality that had undertones of _and if you mention him again, I am going to leave you like this_. "Why _aren't_ you sleeping, Merlin? Don't think I haven't noticed you waking up in the middle of the night --"

 _Because I can't sleep_ , Merlin almost said. _Because I keep hearing voices._

It had been happening more and more lately. He would wake up completely _certain_ that something, or someone, had been speaking to him. It was only recently that he had been able to sleep soundly enough -- thanks to a very thorough shagging -- to sleep through it and understand what was going on.

He wasn't sure how he was going to tell Arthur that he might have gone too far when he linked their swords together. Instead, he avoided the subject entirely. "Maybe I'm a bit stressed out, yeah?"

Arthur's lips trailing down his chest made his words weak and whispery.

"I can take care of that," Arthur said.

"But Will's coming and we'll be rushed," Merlin complained, his words smothered by a kiss.

"No," Arthur said, pulling Merlin's running vest off the rest of the way and wrenching the undershirt over Merlin's head before pressing bare chests together. "Now, we get to have shower sex."

Merlin's knees buckled at the thought. The only other time they'd had shower sex was when Arthur left the bathroom door open one morning and Merlin snuck in with him when he was rinsing out his hair. They'd stroked each other off in a soapy rush and heated kisses and a few near-drowning incidents under the high-pressure shower spray that turned cold all too quickly. Arthur had been in to work much later than he'd originally planned when they moved to the bed for a more thorough shagging while waiting for the water to heat up again.

"You like that, yeah?" Arthur said, and Merlin could feel Arthur's smug grin against his neck. Merlin thought it rather disturbing how well Arthur could read him. They hadn't been together _that_ long.

"It'll have to be fast shower sex," Merlin pointed out. "They're probably almost here."

Arthur pulled away from where he was sucking a bruise on Merlin's throat. "Is Will the type to barge in?"

"He's the type to walk in like he owns the place. Kind of like you, actually, except without the actually owning the place part," Merlin said, glancing down when Arthur stepped on the shorts that were pooled around Merlin's ankles and raised suggestive eyebrows. He took the hint and stepped out of them, hopping out of his socks.

"Then we lock the door," Arthur said, shimmying out of his shorts and leaving them on the floor. "We turn on the music really loud. And when he starts banging on the door -- Well, either Gwaine or Perce will hold him back, or they'll help him get in. Either way..."

Arthur was a handsy person even at the best of times, but at the moment he was above and beyond politely tactile. His hands, large and rough and callused, moved Merlin around, pushed Merlin forward, and pulled him back for a string of hungry kisses. There wasn't a moment that Arthur's hands weren't on Merlin during the journey to the bathroom -- rubbing, groping, stroking and pinching until Merlin squealed.

"I knew you were a girl," Arthur teased, guiding Merlin against the shower tile.

In revenge, Merlin used his magic to turn on the water, bathing Arthur in a sharp, stinging spray of icy cold. There was a confused moment full of gasping shouts, surprised yelps, and a bit of scrambling and squirming until the water warmed up and Merlin had Arthur trapped in the corner. 

"Not a girl," Merlin grumbled, letting his fingers run down every ripple of muscle, every sharp, defined line, running his tongue along Arthur's jaw and trailing down his throat. It was his turn to run his hands freely over Arthur's body; to feel, to savour, to tease. The moans from Arthur's mouth were delicious, and he smothered each one with kisses that drew approving rumbles from deep down in Arthur's chest. Merlin's hips rocked to rub his cock against Arthur's, slipping on the wet slide of his thigh.

Arthur's fingers dug into Merlin's skin hard enough to bruise, keeping him steady, stopping him from a tease too many. They kissed in a slide of lips and tongues, messy and filthy and sloppy, barely stopping to breathe, barely noticing as the steam of hot water began to cool.

It was Arthur who fumbled for the water control and persuaded more hot water from the taps, who reached for the bar of soap to slick up his hand, who took them both and stroked them up and down in slow, gentle pulls. Merlin pulled away with a whine, answering Arthur's questioning grunt with a kiss.

"Want you to fuck me," Merlin whispered, bringing his lips to Arthur's ear, nibbling at the soft lobe.

Arthur gasped, and after what felt like too long of _nothing_ , of barely any movement, of hardly any breathing, Merlin felt the tiny head-shake of refusal.

"Arthur?"

"Haven't anything," Arthur mumbled, his voice raw. He tilted his head down and did something obscene with his tongue that was most definitely not helped by the soapy hand that stroked their cocks with just the right pressure, the perfect twist of wrist. Suddenly, Merlin wasn't going to last long enough to get Arthur inside him, because if he continued the _things_ he was doing -- 

Merlin couldn't help the completely incoherent sound that he made.

"Not getting out to get them, either," Arthur said, sounding shattered and as broken as Merlin.

"God, Arthur," Merlin groaned, canting his hips up, thrusting his cock into Arthur's hand. He leaned forward, draping an arm around Arthur's shoulders, looking down with a panting breath to watch their cocks rub against each other, silky smooth skin and soapy slide and rough of Arthur's hand.

He came with a sudden tensing shoot of orgasm that coated Arthur's belly; Arthur lasted for only a few more strokes before he came and added to the come on his stomach.

Arthur leaned against Merlin, Merlin's back against the tile, panting warm breaths and shaky little laughs into the crook of his neck. There were snatches of soft kisses against lips and cheeks and throat.

"Water's getting cold," Merlin muttered.

"I know," Arthur said, and his hand ghosted over Merlin's sides, this time with the slippery brush of the bar of soap in his hand.

"Keep this up and we'll never get out of here," Merlin added.

"I don't really think I'd have cause for complaint," Arthur said.

"You'd end up wrinkly and prune-shaped," Merlin said, squirming away from Arthur's hand when it came too close to Merlin's suddenly sensitive penis.

"There's that, yes," Arthur said. "I think I'll survive."

"Plus, Will's not known for being particularly patient, and if he's already here --"

Arthur rolled his eyes and took a step back, half-shaking his head. He made a sound of disgust. "You had to mention Will."

"Sorry."

Arthur's hands were large and warm on Merlin's hips as he moved Merlin into the shower stream, running the soap over his own body before putting the bar in Merlin's hands. They finished washing up in silence, Merlin forgoing a shave and stepping out so that Arthur could finish up. One of them had to go into the office later, and it wasn't Merlin.

Merlin was brushing his teeth when Arthur came out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist. There were fleeting touches -- Arthur's hand drifting across Merlin's bare shoulders, a brush of elbows when they reached for the same towel, his fingers behind Merlin's neck where the hair was curling long, a light grip at Merlin's waist to move him a little to the left, or out of the path of an open drawer. Merlin tried to catch Arthur's eyes in the mirror, but they were only brief glances, the silence stretching.

Merlin imagined that if he were strapped to a medieval Rack, this was what the torture would feel like, tension pulling at his limbs, making him ache all over.

He left the bathroom, running his hands through his damp hair, making more of a mess of it. He paced back and forth, stopping a metre from the window, because he'd been told never to stand in front of the windows for too long if he could help it, and pressed his palm into his eyes.

_What the fuck just happened?_

Arthur had gone from being sweet and needy and soft -- not to mention _horny_ , something with which Merlin found absolutely no fault whatsoever -- to distant and forbidding and shuttered in an eyeblink, and Merlin didn't _understand_. It couldn't have been anything that Merlin had done, because, well.

He paused.

What if it _had_ been Merlin?

It hadn't exactly been fantastic shower sex -- fast and rough and not enough hot water, and that was probably because Gwaine and Perce were using up the water too (the pillocks). The hot water problem was something easily remedied if only Merlin thought of casting a spell to heat up the water in the first place. But it _could_ have been fantastic, if only Arthur hadn't said _no_ , if only it hadn't been anything much more than a quick wank.

Merlin had been the one who warned that it would have to be quick, because Will was on his way -- but still, it stung that Arthur had brushed aside the suggestion that maybe it didn't have to be quick after all.

"Fuck," Merlin muttered.

Merlin dropped his hands from his face, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, and chewed his lower lip, half-listening to the water tap being shut off from the sink, imagining Arthur completing his usual routine. He'd wipe away his toothbrush and put it away; he'd place everything in the side drawer in their designated spot. He'd fold the towels and put them aside, spend a few minutes fussing with his hair, and sometimes linger, staring at his reflection in the mirror the way he did, sometimes, his gaze long and unfocused, as if he were staring at something beyond the mirror, through the polish, at something in the distance, scrying and divining the future.

Merlin wished he could read Arthur's mind. He wished he could understand what had happened over the last few minutes. It wasn't like Arthur to go hot to cold so quickly -- Merlin had always thought of him on a low, broiling simmer, just waiting for that little flick of a switch that would turn him into the fierce inferno that Merlin knew Arthur hid just under his skin.

There was the sound of a drawer sliding shut. The muffled slap of fleeced fabric on the counter. A pause that lasted as long as Arthur wanted it to last, but it was maddening, and Merlin turned to stand in the doorway, stopping short, because Arthur was on his way out.

Merlin's fingers gripped the doorjambs. He forced himself to make eye contact, to see the tight set of Arthur's jaw, the thin press of his lips, the tightening around the blue of Arthur's gaze, normally bright and pale as a crisp winter sky. Now, his eyes were a stormy grey that robbed Merlin's lungs of air he dearly needed to speak.

"Arthur," Merlin said, small and strangled.

They stared at each other. Neither spoke. Neither looked away.

It was Arthur who broke first. His gaze drifted down, a muscle worked in his jaw, and there was the faintest crack of bone against bone as he forced himself to relax.

"Damn it, Merlin," Arthur said without heat, taking the single step he needed to close the distance between them. He threw an arm over Merlin's shoulder, his hand drifting down to his spine, firm, close, warm. His free hand went around Merlin's waist, to the small of his back, holding him in place.

It could have been done quickly, before Merlin had a chance to react. In reality, every one of Arthur's movements was slow and deliberate, hesitating at every quarter, giving Merlin every single chance he could ever want to pull away.

In that instant, it almost was as if Merlin could read Arthur's mind, and all it took was for him to see the flicker of amusement in Arthur's eyes to hear the words clearly in his head.

 _You're like a bloody_ fawn _, Merlin._

He could even hear the tone. Fond and quiet and soothing, luring him to stillness until he could be captured.

Merlin didn't think he was trembling until he reached up and around, mirroring the way Arthur was holding him. It wasn't until they were settled against each other that he felt the tense muscles in his shoulders ease.

"I just want you," Arthur said finally. "Just you."

Merlin didn't answer, but his heart started beating impossibly quick. Their foreheads touched, and Merlin felt lips against his cheek.

"Don't you want..." There was uncertainty in Arthur's tone. "Merlin?"

Merlin released the tight breath that he'd been holding, screwing his eyes tight. He was such an idiot. He knew how Arthur wanted it to be just the two of them sometimes, without having to carry on with pretences and covers and all that other bollocks, and here Merlin had been, panicking about _Will_ , of all people, who, honestly, really did need panicking over. But Arthur had the right of it, to calm down and wait, because they couldn't do anything for damage control until they had Will here and could figure out what was going on. "Yeah. Yeah. I do. God. You have no idea."

"Don't I?" Arthur asked, his tone bemused, but there was no missing the strain.

"The way you look at me sometimes, do you really think I _care_ about condoms anymore?" Merlin muttered.

Arthur jerked his head away. The rush of cool air against Merlin's face didn't transfer down to the rest of him because Arthur was still holding him tight. His expression clouded over again, his brows pinching, his mouth softening to wrap around a question that he was too surprised to ask out loud.

Merlin found himself shaking his head, warmth returning to his cheeks by way of an embarrassing flush, and he stammered, "Sorry. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that, I was just, I mean, the Directory checked us all out, yeah? Took enough blood to feed a metric tonne of leeches for a whole _year_. Ran every test, and I know they did, and I know we're both _clean_ \--"

He hadn't meant to see Arthur's file, but he was sure that Arthur had seen _his_ , in any case, because the doctor hadn't exactly been subtle when he'd said that Merlin's file was right on _that table over there_ , if Merlin wanted to see it, but it turned out to be Arthur's instead, and, _oh, so sorry, yes, gave you the wrong file, silly me, I meant to give you this one, either way it doesn't matter, both of you very clean, very healthy, you've got nothing to worry about._.

Arthur's look didn't change, though wishful thinking had Merlin believing that maybe there was a different sort of tension to Arthur, now, less the sort that came with storm clouds and thunderstorms and torrential rainfalls, and more of the kind that was the light drizzle and cold nipping chill that drove people to snuggle in front of a fireplace.

"It's just that. I was thinking. I've been thinking about it. A lot," Merlin said, and he knew he was babbling because he was trying to tell himself to shut up, only, his mouth wasn't _listening_ to his brain. "Too much, actually. It's just. You know. I mean. It'll help with our covers --"

Arthur licked his lips.

Merlin stuttered, his eyes drifting down to trace the path Arthur's tongue took, to linger on the wet that trailed behind, and, _fuck_ , if he weren't getting hard right now just thinking about bending over for Arthur, slicked up by nothing but spit, with nothing between them --

The knock on the door startled Merlin enough to make him jump, but Arthur's only reaction was to tighten his arms around Merlin.

"Kay and Will just pulled up," Gwaine said through the door.

Arthur cleared his throat. And again. "We'll be right down." He sounded completely _strangled_.

"Right. I'll serve him a cheery cup of tea, shall I?" Gwaine said mockingly, stomping his way down the stairs. "Haul arse, you two."

Merlin swallowed. "Um. We. We should."

"Yeah. We should," Arthur said, but he wasn't letting go. "We. Yeah."

They took a sudden step apart, staring at each other before going their separate ways -- Arthur to the walk-in, Merlin to the dresser, and the two of them, in a fit of hurry-up-and-get-dressed, hurried up and got dressed. Merlin pulled on a pair of his soft, comfortable jeans, worn and threadbare in all the right places, and one of the newer shirts that Arthur had bought him, a ribbed and fitted short-sleeved V-neck that made him look thinner and leaner than he really was. When he turned around, he forgot how to breathe, because Arthur was in one of his business suits, the expensive fabric of his trousers framing him perfectly, from solid thighs to firm arse, his shirt pulling slightly at his shoulders, tapering at the waist, his tie loose around the collar, his jacket in his hand.

They stared at each other for a long moment, scrambled for the door, and reached for the handle at the same time. There was a bit of an electric shock at the contact, and Merlin found himself steadied against the door by Arthur's firm grasp.

"We'll talk about this later," Arthur said, the rough of his voice leaving no question what _this_ was.

Merlin didn't trust his voice. He nodded.

Arthur opened the door, but Merlin caught him. "Wait. Let me go first. Will won't shoot me."

"You hope," Arthur said.

"I hope, yeah," Merlin said. "But I'm pretty sure he won't."

Will was standing just shy of the steps leading down to the front door, a dusty olive-green duffel bag on the floor next to him. He was wearing a beat-up jacket, the insignia on the shoulder freshly ripped off, the darker colour of the faded overcoat and the wash-worn letters and numbers hinting _army property_. His jeans were smeared with dirt -- he must have been in-between washings when he got his R &R -- his boots were scuffed and caked with mud from the fields, and there was an all-too familiar rise of his brow.

Merlin couldn't breathe; the tension in the room was _suffocating_. Perceval was standing near the stairs, his arms crossed; Gwaine was leaning casually against the island in the kitchen. Bohrs was somewhere with a clear line of fire, but Merlin doubted that he had Gwaine's quick draw, and, besides, he looked more as if he were ready to block an escape route than anything else. Kay stood nearby, a few feet away from Will, his eyes narrowed with watchfulness, his arms loose at his side, lips curled in an amused smirk that was so far from amused, Merlin knew it was a signal to duck for cover.

Will, on the other hand, was a completely different story.

His mouth was tight, his eyes were wide, and he stood in that peculiar, relaxed way that really was only a ploy to lure the enemy into lassitude, because he was actually coiled so tight, he was going to pop at any moment. If he didn't take his hands out of his pockets right now, Merlin was going to have to enchant a shield around everyone in the room just to be on the safe side, because a volatile Will was a volatile Will, and however much Merlin knew that the members of Excalibur could handle themselves, they'd never had to handle themselves when the other guy was Will. He didn't care how well Kay might have searched Will -- Will _always_ managed to hold back a weapon or two.

"Will --"

Will raised his chin, but under the shaggy scruff of his army-trimmed dirty blond hair, his hazel eyes were locked on a target behind Merlin. He took his hand out of his jacket pocket and jabbed a finger in the air. "I warned you, Pendragon."

Merlin kept himself between Arthur and Will as he advanced, holding up his hands to show that he wasn't going to hurt him -- even though Will damn well knew about his magic and that Merlin would glue him to the wall with it if he had to. "It's not what you think --"

"So what is it, then? A line of bollocks? Freya completely misread the situation? That plonker didn't beat you? You walked into a wall just like you did first year of uni?"

"I don't know what Freya told you, and goddamn it, she's got a big gob. But I kept telling her, and I'm telling you now, Arthur didn't hit me," Merlin said.

Will glanced at him, finally tearing his gaze from Arthur.

"What was it, then? An accidental elbow while you were fucking? A knee because you didn't blow him the way he likes?"

Merlin reddened. "You can shut up now."

"You forget, Merlin. I was there picking you up in uni, brushing you off, getting between you and those fucking blockheads --" 

"Right, you were there, picking me up in uni, and I don't need you picking me up now, because everything is fine --"

"How fine, Merlin?" Will's eyes were dark. "How fine? Am I going to get a call that you've ended up in the A&E --"

"That were a fucking bunch of gay bashers, and you right know that," Merlin snapped, ignoring the way Kay's eyes glanced behind him and refusing to turn around to see how everyone else was taking that little revelation. 

"And that other time?"

"Now you're just crossing the line," Merlin shouted.

"What other time?" Arthur asked, his presence heavy right behind Merlin, body heat searing the air between them and burning his skin where his fingers brushed the back of Merlin's neck.

"The other time when Merlin _supposedly_ ," Will curved his fingers in the air around the word, "Got himself pissed blind and ended up at the bottom of the stairs at our flat with a concussion, a cracked rib, a black eye, a fat lip, and Theo nowhere to be seen."

Merlin squawked. That _wasn't_ what had happened that night at all, and just what was Will playing at? "Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Will --"

Will cut him off before Merlin could continue, his eyes finding Arthur. "And get your bloody hands off of him, if you know what's good for you --"

"Will!"

"Outside. Right fucking now," Will snapped, his eyes back on Merlin's. "We're going to talk, and I'm going to get the truth --"

"No one's going anywhere," Arthur said, his tone warning. His hand never left Merlin's shoulder. "You want to talk, you talk in here."

"As if Merlin's going to tell me anything with you looking over his shoulder," Will said with a scoff.

Arthur's hand slid down Merlin's back. He held up his hands in the air and took a step back before motioning in a grand gesture. "Be my guest."

He went into the kitchen, obviously unconcerned, and the sounds of cabinet and refrigerator doors opening and closing filled the air. Will frowned, watching Arthur and the others before returning to Merlin with a question in his eyes that he didn't voice out loud.

"Merlin? You want one?" Arthur asked.

"Yeah, all right," Merlin said. He glanced toward the kitchen, but Arthur's back was to them, and there was a delicious stretch of cotton as he reached up for another glass for Merlin's protein shake. "Look, Will. Freya has it all wrong --"

"Does she, now?" Will crossed his arms over his chest. After a moment, he gestured at Merlin's face. "I can see it, you know. It's not all gone yet. You're telling me Captain Prat over there didn't punch you?"

"No. He didn't punch me." Merlin looked at Will long and hard and raised a brow. "And you damn well know that if anyone ever tried, I'd tear them inside out. And that includes Theo."

"So what the fuck happened? And if you tell me you walked in a goddamn lamppost --"

"Someone punched me."

" _What?_ "

"It wasn't Arthur," Merlin added quickly.

"Who was it, then?"

"Look, it doesn't matter. It was a misunderstanding, and it's not going to happen again," Merlin said, because he was pretty sure that Arthur would skin anyone alive for _trying_ , and well before Merlin had the chance to do it himself. He did his best not to look over his shoulder toward Bohrs. "I don't know what Freya told you, but she didn't have the bloody right --"

Will grabbed Merlin's arm and dragged him across the room, away from Kay who was lingering nearby, away from Bohrs, who moved to intercept.

It was Arthur, surprisingly, who said, "Let them talk. Give them some privacy."

Will kept his back to the wall, shifting his body so that he could keep everyone else in his line of sight. Once he was satisfied that the others weren't coming any closer and that they were out of earshot, he said, "Freya sent me video."

"Oh." Merlin couldn't hold back his wince. He wondered if he should upload a virus to the Internet to delete every goddamn copy of the Algiers video -- preferably before it got put on YouTube or something and his Mum saw it.

"Nearly died, didn't you?"

"Um." Merlin pressed his lips together, not sure what to say.

"You don't call to tell me you're back. Why the fuck not?"

"I. Um. I couldn't. I was busy," Merlin said, wondering why the fuck every single one of his lines, drilled in by that bitch of a theatre director at the Directory, had suddenly vanished. He _knew_ what he was supposed to say, but he also knew that Will wouldn't buy any of it. The stock answers were designed to support his cover story, not to explain to people who _knew_ him that he'd really been couch-hopping all over Europe for the last several years and that he'd been lying to them about being in the army all along.

"Right. And him?" Will nodded his head at something over Merlin's shoulder, and by _him_ , Merlin assumed that he meant Arthur. "When did that happen?"

"A while ago," Merlin said weakly.

"You know there's _rules_ against that? I remember me telling you there were rules against that, Merlin. What the fuck is wrong with you --"

Merlin rubbed his forehead and pinched his nose.

"Now picture me, minding my own fucking business, cock in hand ready to wank to this brand new nudie mag I got in the mail, and I'm in the privacy of my bunk when Freya calls and all I hear is her blubbering that you're Pendragon's twink, and he's beating you and she's bloody well _terrified_ for you --"

"She's one to talk," Merlin muttered, wrapping his arms around his chest.

"Does your Mum know about him?" Will asked suddenly.

"Oh, God," Merlin whimpered, ducking his head, covering his eyes.

"What the fuck's going on, Merlin?" Will asked.

"Nothing's going on!" Merlin blurted out. "For fuck's sake, Will, why are you _even_ here --"

Will didn't answer. Merlin lowered his hand and looked at him, but Will wasn't making eye contact.

"Will?"

Will shrugged his shoulders in a nervous tic violent enough to shake off the imaginary spiders that were crawling all over him. His eyes shifted left and right and back again, and Merlin followed his glance over to the duffel bag that had been dropped right inside the doorway.

"Will? Are you even supposed to be here?"

Will's anger dissipated behind a cloud of embarrassment when his gaze went right to the floor.

"You fucking wanker!" Merlin shoved Will back against the wall as hard as he could. "You're AWOL!"

**ooOOoo**

Just when Arthur thought he was becoming immune to recurrences, Merlin once again successfully short-circuited Arthur's brain.

The meeting with Bryn and Freya at the Pentagram only had confirmed Arthur's initial suspicions that things were moving faster than he'd planned for. But instead of worrying about it, Arthur had taken Merlin to bed that night, and they'd fucked long and slow until they were spent. Arthur had curled around Merlin; he'd listened to Merlin as he drifted off to sleep, as he breathed quietly, stirring and fussing before finally settling down from a particularly vivid dream. It was then and only then that Arthur had allowed himself think. He had come to the conclusion that if the mission was conspiring against them, if the Directory or the Army or MI-5 or whatever else was going to get in the way of their relationship, if the bloody goddamn _Fates_ were so intent on curtailing his plans with Merlin, he would take what he could get, when he could get it.

And then, during some of _their_ time together, bloody Will had called and ruined everything. It wasn't until sometime after he'd slowed down and started the last circuit around the park that Arthur had realized that his reaction to Will's phone call had been extreme. First, he'd thought, _bloody fucking hell, Merlin, did you have to answer your cell right now_ , which was quickly followed up with _of course Will was in town, because his life just_ couldn't _be easy_. The rest of the run home had been a fruitless attempt to sort through the possibilities, to map out the string of coincidences and events that had led to Will's phone call and appearance in London, roughly pushed aside in favour of something more important.

Spending as much time with Merlin as he could.

When he could.

Only, Merlin hadn't been able to let go of the idea of Will being in town, and he had been -- was still -- panicking at the idea that Will was going to shoot Arthur.

Arthur had handled that rather well. About as well as a professional snake charmer forgetting the notes and losing rhythm right before the snake bit him half a dozen times.

Merlin had noticed, or he wouldn't have lingered right outside the bathroom door waiting for Arthur to emerge, and there had been something so helpless, so desperate, so afraid in his expression that Arthur knew he had to explain --

Except his mouth wouldn't work the way it was supposed to, and all the philosophical waxing in his head came out in a jumble of words, but it had been what Arthur had needed to say and what Merlin had needed to hear.

Right up until Merlin's babble and the very not-subtle hint that he wouldn't have minded if Arthur fucked him bare. That he'd _wanted_ Arthur to fuck him bare.

Arthur was only lucky that, when he dressed, he hadn't stumbled out of the walk-in closet with mismatched socks or wearing that lavender shirt that didn't go with _anything_ he owned, and why Morgana had bought it for him in the first place, Arthur would _never_ know. It took that long for the bright-white stun to clear from Arthur's head, and before he could say anything to Merlin, Arthur was struck dumb by the sight of him.

Those soft blue jeans, faded and worn the way store-brought and factory-stonewash would never attain, hanging from narrow hips by a miracle of anti-gravity -- or in Merlin's particular case, magic. That shirt, the one with the V-neck that framed bony collarbones and an expanse of bare skin from chest and throat that prompted all sorts of lustful thoughts that _would not get out of Arthur's head_.

It did not help that there was no hiding the marks that Arthur had sucked on Merlin's skin, fading from the night before, standing out in stark contrast against the pale. It definitely did not help that the fabric clung to Merlin's long, lean build and pointed an arrow at the bright red mark that Arthur had left on Merlin while they were in the shower.

Arthur wasn't sure where he'd found the strength to keep from grabbing Merlin and flinging him onto the bed and fucking him bare _right now_ like Merlin wanted -- like _Arthur_ suddenly craved. It might have had something to do with a lingering sense of self-preservation against not being shot by Merlin's sniper of a best mate and the startling knock on the bedroom door when Gwaine left a warning that the shite was about to hit the fan.

They _were_ going to finish their conversation. Arthur would make time for it. 

Somehow.

If he could ever stop staring at Merlin's arse.

 _Bloody hell. Where_ had _he gotten those jeans?_

In or out of character, Arthur was not letting Will take Merlin out of his sight. In or out of character, Arthur was not going to pay attention to the bile spewing out of Will's mouth, even if there had been that one surprising revelation about a hospitalization following a gay bashing that Arthur dimly remembered Merlin mentioning, a long time ago. He pointedly ignored the jealous flare that accompanied the slip of the nearly-breaking-of-Merlin's-neck by some pillock named Theo. And he really, really, tried to focus on the reason why that Will was in town.

In his flat.

Threatening to kill him.

If his brain would start working properly, Arthur would _appreciate it_. He shut his eyes tight and tried to think.

Merlin and Arthur had met with Freya and Bryn on Friday night. It was now Monday morning. Assuming that Freya hadn't gotten in touch with Will until mid-afternoon on Saturday, or maybe not until Sunday morning if she hadn't quite believed either Arthur or Merlin or her own accusations and took longer to make up her mind, Will's explosive reaction (and equally explosive arrival) was perfectly understandable.

Every bit of him, from body language to angry glares to the words that spilled from his lips -- everything pointed at _he'd just heard_ , and he was acting accordingly.

In spectacular fashion.

There was something else not quite right about the display that Arthur was watching unfold before him, and he wasn't certain what it was. It was difficult to put his finger on it without knowing Will a bit better, without being able to hear the hushed words that were being traded between Merlin and Will, without being able to clearly see his mannerisms and his poker tells. At the same time, if he looked past the bluster and the heat and the hatred -- a hatred that was directed to Arthur regardless of what Arthur might have done, and apparently hard-wired in Will's DNA -- he saw other things.

Like the way that Will was scanning the flat, taking note of the position of the furniture, the telly, the corridors, the windows. The way he glanced at Bohrs and Perceval, who were closest, as if measuring how fast they might move if Will were to pull a weapon that Kay had damn well had better have relieved before letting Will into the flat. The way his attention drifted to Gwaine, as if he half-expected another sniper to _notice_ what he was doing.

Which was casing out the place, measuring out lines-of-sight, and gauging the team's readiness. Half of it was clean out of the sniper handbook. The other half of it was in semi-desperation, as if Will well and fully planned on nesting out somewhere to wait out the days and weeks before Arthur happened to wander into his gunsight. Or maybe it was because of something else.

There was an aspect to Will that was tightly controlled, veiled, hidden. It was not at all like the Will that Arthur had met at the pub outside of London, when Will had taken a quick R&R to come see Merlin and meet the team and threaten Arthur’s longevity if he ever hurt Merlin. Then, Arthur had pegged Will as a fly-away, quick on the trigger when he wasn't on the job, his logic ruled by his emotions except where it had been beaten into him to let logic run the show. He wore his emotions on his sleeve just like Merlin did, but unlike Merlin, he wasn't as quick to warm up to people and even then, getting on his good side was a chancy bet at best.

No, something was off about Will, and Arthur couldn't place it. He didn't have enough information to properly evaluate the situation.

It was hard not to watch Merlin, to take in the way he wrapped his arms around his chest, the way his shoulders bowed. Merlin was angry the way he rarely got angry, trying to contain it before he lashed out, even lowering his head to cover his eyes at something that Will said to him that Arthur couldn't hear. Then, abruptly, Arthur could see that anger creep out. Merlin's arms slackened and he wasn't holding himself as tightly. He leaned forward into Will's space when he was normally solicitous of not making people uncomfortable. He asked -- no, demanded -- a question, and Will's angry, forbidden, _it's-my-fucking-way-or-the-goddamn-highway_ attitude suddenly fell like a bag of bricks.

Merlin's gaze glanced at Will's duffel bag. Arthur followed the gaze, and frowned at Kay, wondering if he checked out the bag too when he frisked Will, because the bag was just long enough to store a good rifle. Kay raised a _do you doubt me_ brow, but just as quickly returned his attention to Will and Merlin, and Arthur did the same.

Just in time.

If Arthur hadn't been watching, he would have missed the exact point when the tables turned. If he had blinked, he wouldn't have seen it at all.

Merlin shoved at Will, hands square on Will's chest, pushing so hard that Will crashed into the plaster (but thank _fuck_ not through it, because Arthur didn't want contractors in the house fixing walls and installing who knew what else) and bounced off. Merlin's voice raised from a low whisper to a loud hiss, and the only word that Arthur got before the two of them started in on a shouting match was, "... AWOL!"

Kay took a step forward, then glanced uncertainly at Arthur. Perceval moved closer while Bohrs moved back, and Gwaine made himself comfortable against the kitchen island, reaching back to grab the biscuit tin and shoving his mouth full of sweets.

It was hard, now, not to overhear the conversation, especially since the two of them were yelling at each other at full volume. 

"Are you out of your goddamn mind? You're AWOL? Do you know what they're going to do to you when they catch you?"

"What was I supposed to do? Freya's calling me every fucking five minutes! I'm on the range, Merlin! Do you know how it looks when I check my phone as if I'm suddenly tits over arse over some --"

"Your phone has an off button! I know you know there's an off button! I've seen you use it!"

"I use it, and then what? She fills up my inbox and my voice mail with messages and I'm going crazy because she's not telling me anything, it's coming out in bursts, and what am I supposed to _think_ , Merlin? She has me thinking you've been beaten to a bloody purple pulp --"

"Do you really fucking think I'd let _anyone_ beat me to a bloody purple pulp --"

"I don't know, do I? She sends me that vid, tells me that because of Captain Prat over there --" Arthur frowned slightly, because he really didn't like that nickname, and was going to have to pummel Will if he kept using it. "-- you could've died!"

"It wasn't his fault!"

"Whose fault was it?"

"We were on a mission! I couldn't tell you about it! No, don't ask me _now_ because I still can't, and I'm not going to tell you. No, it couldn't -- will you stop poking at me? The other guys -- well, I couldn't do much, could I? I couldn't just --" Merlin made a twinkly-fingered gesture in the air that Will promptly swatted down before anyone could see.

"Shut it!" Will said, in a wild-eyed, well-meaning attempt to keep Merlin from saying anything incriminating, protective of Merlin -- even against Merlin himself -- to the very end. Arthur had to at least give him some grudging respect for being that good of a friend to Merlin. "You know what you could've done? You could've said _sod you all, I'm not doing this shite, I weren't trained for this secret agent bollocks_ \--"

Arthur's eyes narrowed. He might not know what Merlin and Will were whispering about before, but the secret agent remark had come out of left field.

It wasn't the answer to every question that Arthur had, but it was a big enough puzzle piece to start to see the full picture and fill in the blanks.

"I took anti-interrog! You know I did! You're the one who told me to go and do it, that it'd be good for my career --"

"Yes, I did, but one little anti-interrogation course a rat's age ago? That means you can go off with the little fancy mini camera and exploding watch and the shiny silver Ferrari and the cute little 9mm _how, exactly_? You're hardly James Bond --"

"You haven't seen me in a suit!"

"Oh, _God_ , they have you wearing suits?" Will rolled his eyes. "This I have to see -- little fucking skinny penguin flapping around going _excuse me, do you know where I can find the evil overlord's office? I have to take a few snapshots of his secret plans to take over the world_ \--"

They hadn't resorted to shoving and pushing just yet, but Arthur could see that it was going to happen soon. He shook his head, flipped up the collar of his shirt, and tied his tie.

Will had been Merlin's contact person into the NWO, not Freya. Freya was contacting Will to get him to do something about Arthur -- either because she was concerned about Merlin's well-being, or she was relying on Will to be a heavy hitter. Except there was absolutely no reason not to think of Will as smart enough to skip confronting Arthur directly instead of simply blowing his brains out onto the sidewalk at the first opportunity.

He had the sniper training. He should know better than to alert anyone to his presence. There was definitely something else.

"This isn't about me," Merlin shouted. "This is about _you_ \-- you need to get back up on base before they catch you with your thumb up your arse acting like a _jealous bird_ \--"

Will shoved first. Merlin took a staggering step back. "I'm not your _bird_ , take that back!"

"Oi! Who do you think you're shoving?" Merlin shoved back, but Will, having probably a couple of stone on Merlin, barely budged.

"You! You _idiot_! I'm off _one day_ and you're having kittens? You're the one who's owing months more base time, what are you doing _here_? Never mind just you, what about the lot of them?" Will gestured behind Merlin at Arthur and Perceval and Bohrs and Gwaine and Kay. "Didn't you tell me that they had nearly as much time left as you do? By my count, you've been on this so-called R &R for weeks more than you're supposed to -- what the fuck are you doing --"

"It's none of your bloody business!"

Will smacked Merlin along the side of his face. Merlin reached up and covered his ear. "You arse!"

Arthur suddenly knew what the _something else_ was. There was no way that Merlin -- or anyone else -- would have told Will that they hadn't been on base for weeks. As far as anyone knew, they'd discharged outright. Arthur straightened his tie in the reflection of the stainless steel toaster and adjusted his collar.

"It's my bloody business! We've known each other how long? And all of a sudden you're keeping _secrets_ from me? Since when do you do that?"

"Since _forever!_ "

"Bollocks! You're shite at secrets!" There was a smack up the side of Merlin's head.

"I can keep secrets!" Merlin shouted, slapping Will back. "You damn well know I can! I never told Mum about your academic probation, did I?"

"Ow! You didn't _have_ to! Your Mum goes, _how was the semester, Will_ and you go bug-eyed with a Cheshire Cat grin and she bloody well _knew_ how my semester was!"

"If you hadn't told me --"

"If you were a better liar --"

And as predicted, the shoving and pushing devolved into a choke hold (on Merlin) and a judo flip (on Will). There was a kick of scuffed army boots a little too close to Merlin's groin for Arthur's comfort before Merlin crashed bony knees on Will's stomach. Perceval intervened by grabbing Merlin by the waist and hauling him away. Bohrs put a foot on Will's throat, pointed his gun in Will's face, and chambered a round.

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed at the dull ache growing in his forehead. He glanced at Gwaine, who held up the empty biscuit tin.

"We're out."

"Add it to the shopping list." 

Merlin and Will were yelling obscenities at each other. Merlin was going through his rather creative inventory of names while Will was swearing ever second word, rivalling Kay in frequency, throughput, and imaginative use of the words "fuck", "shite", "bollocks", "bloody" and, for some unfathomable reason, the word "slam".

Arthur sighed inwardly and decided that he'd better do something to put a stop to this or the neighbours would complain. Merlin -- who had warned Arthur on several occasions that he could be loud, was certainly proving it now, in fine fashion. Will was bellowing at operatic levels and could probably be heard in the back row of the Palladium theatre without electronic magnification -- assuming the back row was a couple of blocks in the next country -- completely ignoring the gun in his face. The only mercy was that Will was at least smart enough to stay where he was.

Arthur walked around the kitchen counter toward the fiasco, pausing for a moment to run his finger through Merlin's still-damp hair, trying not to smirk in amusement when Merlin flailed his arms about to knock Arthur's hand away. Perceval had Merlin against his hip, his arm around his waist, and Merlin was hanging like a worm from a hook, all dangling limbs and helpless.

Arthur glanced at Perceval and tilted his head. Perceval took a big step back and put Merlin down, clamping a big hand on his shoulder to keep him from surging forward. Arthur crouched down next to Will, considering his words carefully.

"Who recruited you first?"

If Arthur hadn't been looking for it -- indeed, even if he _had_ been looking for it -- he might have missed the way Will's eyes darted to the left, the way his mouth twitched in abortive protest, the way his body went very, very still, like a prey pausing, alert and tense, ready to bound away at the slightest ruffle of leaves, whether it was from a predator's oncoming pounce, the innocent brush of the wind, or wound-up nerves. The hesitation was only a fraction of a second too long. Anyone else would have been fooled.

"What the fuck? What are you on?" Will snarled. "Get the fuck off me, you _gorilla_ \--"

Bohrs put a little more pressure on Will's throat, and Will made a small, exaggerated choking sound. It was an excellent tactic -- avoiding the question with evasive manoeuvres compounded by not having to answer at all because _his windpipe was crushed_.

Behind him, Arthur heard Merlin's confused "What?" but didn't answer.

Will was good. Very good. Except for a couple of slips -- the _secret agent_ bit, which could have been deliberate or completely accidental, and the mention of how long the team had been gone, he'd almost fooled Arthur. Those slips might as well have been with this whole show having been planned five minutes ago on the fly instead of it having been drilled into him. Except for those two mistakes, Will could probably have been among them all along at the Directory compound, getting the same training as Excalibur.

Arthur waited. He waited some more. Eventually, Will stopped struggling, the pressure of Bohrs' foot on his throat eased, and Will stared at Arthur, trying to feign confusion and ignorance and doing a good job of it.

He must have realized that Arthur wasn't buying it for a minute, because his face twisted angrily, and he snapped, "You just cost me a hundred quid, you fucking pillock!"

"Oh, is that all?" Arthur asked. A hundred quid sounded like Bayard's usual bet.

Will's head thunked on the floor. He glanced around, met Arthur's eyes, and spread his hands in a gesture that Arthur couldn't misunderstand. _Is the area clear?_

"We swept earlier. House is clear," Arthur said. Tension spilled out of Will and he nearly melted through the floor.

"Fucking hell. Smith told me to stick to the script but I told him I could have you lot on. Nearly got you, too --" Will grabbed at Bohrs' foot. "Get him off of me --"

"What?" Merlin stepped forward, his expression pinched, his hands clenched together tightly, as if he were fully intending of having round two of the sibling squabbling match they had earlier. "You were -- you were _recruited_?"

There was a peculiar tone to Merlin's voice, somewhere between the shrill of aghast and the disappointment of betrayal.

"Obviously," Will said wryly, looking up at Bohrs. He tapped Bohrs' foot. "You mind, mate? While you're at it, you might want to consider a change of socks --"

"You lied to me?" Merlin said, his voice very quiet.

Will lifted his head to look at Merlin, spreading his hands. "There's a thing about the kettle and the pot and the colour black, I forget how it goes --"

"You bloody fucking pillock, you _lied_ to me --" Merlin said, almost shouting.

No one answered him, but everyone gave him a long, quiet look, including Will. Merlin bit his lower lip and coloured, as if he realized suddenly what the rest of them were thinking -- though Will had known about Merlin's magic for a lot longer than the rest of them, and Arthur didn't know what other lie that Will might have caught Merlin in. Arthur was suddenly very curious.

Arthur's gaze went from Merlin, who stood off to the side with an expression that was a combination between furious and embarrassed, to Will, who gestured to Bohrs' foot again.

"A little help here?"

"After you answer my question," Arthur said.

"Man said his name was Smith. Older bloke, white at the temples, looks like he sucked a lemon? You know him, yeah?" Will said, seeing recognition in Arthur's expression. "I'm supposed to debrief you, and tell you to give him a call to confirm everything I'm saying. If you'll let me sit up. Don't worry, your boy over there checked me for weapons." Will thumbed in Kay's direction.

"Found two guns, a pair of knives. Duffel bag's full of clothes, looks like he packed and ran."

Will gave Arthur a _I hate your guts but you're at least better than the other tits_ smile and said, "See? I'm clean."

"No, you're not," Merlin said, his voice low and sullen. "You've got two holdbacks. Heel of his left boot, the knuckle knife in his belt."

"Traitor," Will muttered. Kay tugged off his boots -- both of them -- and batted Will's hands out of the way to undo and yank his belt out of his pant loops.

"'Course I am. What d'you expect?" Merlin asked. "Call me first thing in the bloody morning, threaten to drill a hole through Arthur's skull? Have me nearly pissing myself thinking the game's up because you've got a big damn gob --"

Arthur waved Bohrs away, and it was only with a great deal of reluctance that he clicked the safety and holstered his weapon. Will propped himself up on his elbows and glanced between Merlin and Arthur and back at Merlin. "You too? Seriously?"

No one answered him.

Will waved in the direction of the red marks along Merlin's throat with a pointed stare and raised brow that left no question as to what, exactly, he was looking at. "Didn't get those because of some _incident_ with a hoover again, did you?"

"Fuck you, I were twelve --" There was no anger in Merlin's voice, but a quick glance confirmed the _can I die now_ embarrassment colouring his cheeks.

"You're really with him?" Will asked, his voice a little softer.

"He's really with me," Arthur said calmly. Will stared at him suspiciously, but he must have found his answer in Merlin's expression, because he relented and shrugged. "You want to take a seat and start this debrief of yours?"

Will rolled onto his knees and stood up with a grunt -- Merlin hadn't pulled his punches, and neither had Will, it seemed, if the slight wince when Merlin shifted his seat and rubbed his groin was any indication. Will shrugged out of his coat, tossed it over the back of the couch, and plopped down with an exaggerated look around. "Nice place."

"Start talking," Arthur said, because he knew damn well that Will could care less about the décor. "From the beginning."

Will grunted, but he crossed his legs with an ankle on his knee and draped his arm over the side of the couch, angling to talk more to Merlin than to Arthur, who remained standing. Bohrs moved away to keep an eye on things, but remained within earshot; Perceval eyed Merlin and Will warily, half-expecting them to have another go, and Gwaine leaned a shoulder against the wall, crossing his arms in an oh-so-casual pose that was halfway between boredom and unconsciousness. Kay moved to the dining room where Merlin's laptop and tools and other assorted pieces of equipment were still splayed out, inspecting both boots and the belt buckle, trying to divine how he'd missed the holdback weapons in the first place.

"It happened like this. We talked about the schoolyard toffs and their holier than thou attitude and the whole underground rebellion going on over at the bar, we did, me and Merls, that time when your lot came home on R&R and I hitched a flight down to see him. But soon as I called Freya, I got myself on a watchlist." Will pointed a finger at Merlin. "Could've warned me about that."

"How were I supposed to know back then?"

Will shrugged, as if to say, _well, you should have, is all I'm saying_ , and continued, "Didn't think too much of it. Passed on her number, went back to the job. The usual shite. Yell at greenies who can't hit a bloody target unless the muzzle's _touching_ the bull's-eye. Run the confidence course when I'm feeling flabby. Hit the gym for some PT. Write up reports, summaries, evaluations. God. I fucking hate evals. Fucking thesaurus doesn't have anything for _sucks shite_.

"Guess Smithy rummaged through my undies drawer while I were out. Ran a full check on me. Didn't find anything --"

"Not even your shoplifting --"

"Oh, he found that --"

"Or that time you nearly got caught holding --"

"Found that, too --"

"Or borrowing the headmaster's car and wrapping it around a tree --"

"That were never proven to be me," Will said, raising both brows and pointing a finger at Merlin. "But, yeah, found that. Anyway, he found that load, but he weren't minding that, he were looking for me and them, but apparently I don't fit the profile as well as you do --"

"You don't?" Gwaine asked, frowning. 

Will waved a hand in the air. "Well, I do and I don't. Welsh and all. Angry at the world and all that bollocks. Except --"

"More interested in dipping his dick in every bird who wags her arse at him," Merlin said.

For a moment, it looked as if Will was about to fly two fingers at Merlin, but he aborted after a considering moment and spread his hands instead. "Well, yeah, there were that. Among other things, I suppose. Either way. But the day after Freya called me, frantic because she couldn't get a hold of you --"

"When was that?"

Will was silent for a moment, turning his head to the right, frowning in thought. "A few months. Knew you lot were off on a mission, out of contact. Merls told me he was going off, and not to worry, so I didn't until Freya called me in a bloody freaking froth, saying that she hadn't heard from him, that she'd sent him shite to crack for her, and where the fuck were he. I'm staring at my phone thinking this don't sound right. I remember Merls telling me to make as if he were never suited for the army in the first place, which he isn't --"

Merlin raised two fingers, but didn't interrupt.

"-- that he got bounced after boot camp and all that rubbish, and I tell her, well, last I heard from him, he were heading eastwards somewhere, and not to worry, he's probably sleeping on some bloke's couch, if not sleeping _on_ some bloke in the first place, and to calm the fuck down, that he'll get to whatever she's sent him whenever he gets to it, and to frost up her tits some to cool down. She hung up on me. But then she keeps calling and texting and asking if I've heard from you, and what the fuck were I supposed to say?

"In swans in your Mister Smith, says he's with Her Majesty's blah blah blah, I weren't listening, because by that point, I'm getting pissed, because I can't get hold of Merls and no one's telling me what's going on, and goddamn Freya, she's got me worrying like I were Merls' Mum or something. Smith talks about MI-5 or MI-6 or MI-eleventy thousand or whatever, tosses me some national security bollocks, drops important words like splinter cells and terrorist cells and I don't blink because, yeah, Tristan and Bryn and his bunch? _Totally_ doesn't shock me, and if Freya had been smart and listened to you and me, Merls, back when we were keeping our heads down so the schoolyard toffs didn't get it in their heads to shove ours down the loo --"

"You never had that problem --"

"I kept telling you to stand up for your own toothpick self, you bloody fragile flower," Will said. Arthur glanced between the two of them, wondering how he'd ever worried that Merlin and Will were an item, because the two acted very much the same way that Arthur and Morgana did when they bickered. "So Smithy scoops me out of the teacher rota, sits me down at a table in a dark room with the hot lights on me, and reads me in, and it's all a quarter truth and three quarters bollocks, but I don't find that out until later. I'm sitting there, shirt off because those hot lights really are bloody hot, and I'm rolling a hand in the air and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, so who do you want me to shoot?

"Nobody, as it turns out. I get a pat on the head, get the _be a good boy and tell Freya and hers what we tell you to tell them_ routine, then there's the _we're gonna blindfold you and drop you in the middle of nowhere and you'll have to make your way back on your own_ game, which is really stupid. I thought they only did that in movies."

"Apparently not," Arthur said, when it became obvious that Will were waiting for a response.

"Anyway," Will said, continuing on as if there hadn't been a pause, "Freya's calling every bloody day and I'm starting to feel like she should be putting out or something, because I've never spent that much time on a bird that I weren't sleeping with --"

Gwaine half-chuckled.

"-- and I'm telling her what Smithy wants me to tell her. Then, one beautiful sunny day in the highlands with the latest bunch of recruits and none of us geared up for it when the mercury nosedives to minus twenty overnight, one of the greenies comes up to me. I'm waiting, because, _great, he's gonna moan and whinge and I'm not in the bloody fucking mood_ and I can't feel my fingers and I'm not complaining, are I? And I'm ready to tell him to sit down and shiver it out like the rest of us, but then he starts telling me his life story. I'm sitting there wondering why the fuck should I care that his da is proud of him but his mum's pissed or why he's real confused because his mum's brother is real pleased that he's in the army. Turns out his uncle's saying it means he's getting training for _important_ things, and this kid were real chuffed when he met his mum's brother's boss, who said to make it through basic training _at least_ , but if he can to keep on with it because then he'd become a valuable asset to his organization. He keeps saying Bryn said this and Bryn said that and that he was _guaranteed_ a place in the new world order --"

Arthur froze. Merlin sat up straight. Will kept talking.

"-- and I'm thinking, _if he doesn't stop the bloody monotone I'm going to doze off and freeze to fucking death_ but then he starts talking the same bollocks Bryn and Tristan used to talk about, almost word for word, except, a bit more sophisticated-like, because it sounds like they've polished the speech in the last ten years, and it dawns on me then --

"N. W. Fucking O. So I nod and grunt at the right spots, and eventually the greenie goes away. But then he keeps coming back other times, when no one's around, then at lunch, then having the balls to knocking on my door in the middle of the night when he damn well should be in the barracks bunking down. I guess I'm doing something right. Or wrong, depending on how you see it, because it's like he's feeling me out at first before wasting any more time on me, and suddenly, he's asking me to meet his uncle, who's coming up to visit the next time he's got his weekend R&R."

Will trailed off. He shook himself out of it and said, "I got freaked out. Next time Smithy called to find out what were going on with Freya, I told him about the kid. Smithy says one thing. _Fuck._ Goes quiet on the line, then says, _No. No, this is a good thing. I'm going to call you back._ "

Merlin was sitting elbows on his knees. Gwaine was no longer leaning against the wall. Perceval was frowning, and Kay had abandoned the fiddling he was doing with Will's belt to come closer to listen. Arthur thought that Will told a good story and he was _definitely_ going to be checking it out with Bayard later.

"Smithy told me to keep with it. Coached me on what to say. Met the greenie's uncle, got on well with the bloke. Then the greenie finished basic training and I don't have to listen to him yammering in my ear anymore, but his uncle comes up regular and we have weekly beers in the pub every other week." Will paused. "Really fucking cramped my style. I get a base bunny about to sit in my lap and _uncle Liam_ tells her to piss off. All. The. Fucking. Time."

Merlin chuckles, and Will rubs his face. "It ain't funny."

"Oh, it's plenty funny," Merlin said. "Serves you right, too. How many times did you cockblock _me_?"

"Your own damn fault you have such shoddy taste --"

"Talking about shoddy taste, you're the one pretending to be my clingy boyfriend every time I tried to pull someone --"

"Saving you from yourself," Will insisted. If for no other reason than to learn that Will was the reason that Merlin wasn't with someone else, Arthur decided that he liked Will. Grudgingly. Will sat up straight and said, " _Anyway_ , long story short --"

"Too late," Perceval said. 

"Just a bit," Gwaine said, uncrossing his arms to hold his forefinger and thumb a bare millimetre apart.

"-- been spending as much time on the range teaching as I'm with Smithy's goons learning how to be a proper secret agent, finding out that MI-whatever isn't MI-whatever but something called the Directory, which sounds a tad naff if you ask me, and getting caught up on the other three-quarters that they wouldn't tell me before." Will paused. "I've been read in on your covers, especially yours, Merls, because yours goes sideways in about a billion different vectors, and I'm apparently supposed to know some of them. They've just about made me shite bricks telling me about the NWO. And worse..."

Will hesitated again. He leaned forward, sweeping his glance around the room. "I guess they showed you the magic, too?"

Arthur didn't miss how Will was looking at Merlin, with his eyebrows in a meaningful _do they know about you?_ raise that Merlin must have noticed, because he turned to glance at Arthur.

"They showed us the magic," Arthur said calmly. " _Their_ magic."

If Will picked up on the distinction, Arthur couldn't tell, because he was still looking at Merlin. Merlin, in turn, was looking at Arthur, and Arthur looked back and shrugged a shoulder, hoping that Merlin would understand that it was his to tell.

Merlin took a deep breath, and nodded to himself. He swallowed hard. "They know, Will."

"What?" Will's reaction was somewhere in the middle of the jealousy scale, made mild only because of the suspicion toward the team that clouded his gaze and the relief that sagged the tension of his shoulders at no longer being the only one to carry Merlin's burden. He leaned forward abruptly, and in a stage whisper, said, "No, wait. Who knows? Who, exactly?"

"Arthur knows. My team knows." Merlin scooted forward on his seat, his bum on the very edge, his voice lowered in that same hushed tone of voice that made Arthur wonder, _if this was how they told each other their secrets, how the bloody hell didn't the whole world know those secrets anyway_. Merlin said, "But not the Directory. Not Smith, none of them. Not the NWO, not Freya, not Bryn, not no one. Just you and Arthur and my team. No one else, Will, and don't you dare tell --"

"Oi. Who do you think you're talking to?" Will asked, sounding incensed. "Who were it kept your secret all this time? Not a word from me, not once, not even when we were thirteen and Sammy Hague wanted to know why you were always running away from her, and I told her that she got you so excited you had to go wank off --"

"That were you!" Merlin blurted out in outrage.

"-- but, them..." Will glanced around, narrowed eyes lingering on everyone. It wasn't Arthur's imagination that he was glared at the longest. "You trust them?" 

"With my life," Merlin said, without hesitation.

The two men -- the two brothers, if their closeness was anything to go by, and blood be damned -- stared at each other for a moment longer before Will sniffed, nodded, and sat back as if everything was settled, but he twisted his neck around to give everyone a good long look. "Goes without saying that I'll shoot you lot if I hear about someone opening their big gob?"

"Without saying," Perceval said with a nod. Everyone agreed, even Bohrs, who looked a little concerned.

"All right," Will said. He relaxed and slumped in his seat for all of thirty seconds before bringing his hands to his face and rubbing his fingers into his temples and groaning.

No one spoke. Merlin and Arthur traded glances.

"So if you're not here to shoot Arthur --" Merlin began, but Will dropped his hands and Merlin trailed off.

"Oh, I'm here to shoot Arthur. Went AWOL for it and everything. We had our shouting match over it, didn't we?" Will said with a shrug. "Now I'm supposed to stomp off over to Freya's and say Merls wouldn't let me do aught, says he's fine, there's no beating going on, but I don't believe it for a bloody minute, and can I stick around to keep an eye on him. She already said I can crash at hers."

"That's your cover?" Arthur asked. He didn't need Will's long story short to get any longer to know that Bayard was hedging his bets and hoping that Will would get recruited into the NWO if Arthur and Merlin and the rest of the team didn't make it in. He didn't blame him, but he was a little annoyed by the lack of confidence.

"That's my cover," Will said with a nod and a nervous grin. "Always wanted to be a secret agent, me."

"No," Merlin said suddenly. Everyone looked at him. "No. You're not doing this. You're going back to base, you're going to --"

"I've _orders_ , Merlin. Same as you. I'm not _really_ AWOL. It just looks that way. Just like you haven't really been sleeping your way through Europe over the last few years --" Arthur didn't realise he'd made a strangled sound until Will glanced at him with a dark, unreadable look, the sort he got from Gwaine sometimes when Gwaine wanted to twist the screws in. Will took mercy on him and continued with, "-- couch-jumping, I mean, not necessarily, you know, banging the tourist route around the continent like a two-bit slag --"

"Not helping," Arthur said, his jaw tight.

"My point being," Will said, graciously amending where his mouth was going -- which was wherever his brain took him, apparently -- "You're doing your job, and I'm doing mine, and mine just happens to be wriggling my way into the NWO by way of Freya, because I've been checked and vetted up close and personal by Bryn's employee, and Smithy is thinking that they're going to ask me to join them permanent, and use me to get to you, Merls, on the off-chance that they'll tell Captain Prat here to take a hike. Bonus if that doesn't happen, at which point there's an innie and an outie, but, yeah."

"Will --" Merlin tried again.

"Merlin." Arthur pulled his cell phone from his pocket and gave it to him. "Get the secure line and call Smith."

He wasn't going to give away Bayard's real name, but he was going to check on Will's story. While he was at it, he was going to come up with a plan. A _real_ plan, and not that half-arsed bollocks Bayard always came up with.

Arthur reached a hand out to Will. "Give me _your_ phone."

"What for?" Will asked, his eyes narrowed. He reached in his jeans pocket and held it up.

"Because I'm going to give it to Merlin," Arthur said, noting how Will relaxed. "And Merlin is going to do something very inconsiderate to your phone that no one will be able to track."

"Arthur. It's ringing through," Merlin said.

Arthur traded Will's cell phone and brought his phone to his ear. "Smith."

"Arthur," Bayard said, his voice a clean, crisp and neutral tone. "Has William made an appearance?"

Arthur glanced over his shoulder as he paced slowly. Merlin took Will's cell phone to his worktable -- formerly known as Arthur's dining room table -- while Will got up from his chair and headed into the kitchen. 

"While you two are jawing it out, I'll help myself to some food, yeah? Haven't had nothing but a stale bacon buttie on the train down, and I'm starving," Will said.

Arthur sighed softly, turned away, and said into the phone, "He owes you a hundred quid."

**ooOOoo**

Merlin knew that Arthur believed Will's story the moment Arthur asked for Will's phone and passed it to Merlin for modification -- something that Merlin was happy to do since Will was stupid enough to go through with this absolutely _ridiculous_ plan. Will as a secret agent? Giving him license to snoop and lie and tell stories and be an idiot -- essentially, to be himself?

 _On what bloody planet was that a good idea?_

It was like telling Gwaine to curb his flirtations. Not only would the bird's (male or female in this instance) significant other invariably be twice Gwaine's size, but it wouldn't stop Gwaine in the first place, and it was inevitable that the team would be scraping Gwaine's body from the road by the end of the night for the simple reason that Gwaine couldn't stop himself.

Will wouldn't be able to, either.

Merlin was certain that there was a secret agent equivalent that applied to Will, and that it would end up a whole lot messier. He didn't like it. He didn't want this for Will. And he understood Arthur much better now when he'd gone quiet and silent and seething, ready to tear the Directory a new arsehole for involving Morgana in the first place.

At least with Morgana, Arthur had been able to assign members of Excalibur to watch over her. Will would be on his own.

An increasingly vivid series of images flit their way through Merlin's mind as he worked on Will's phone. 

Will realizing that the NWO had brainwashed Freya. Will mouthing off about their lot being absolutely bloody conkers. Freya finding out that Will lied to her. Bryn realizing that Will wasn't on their side. Will finding out the hard way about Freya's magic. About Freya's true nature.

"It's all right, Merls," Will said, touching Merlin's elbow. Merlin was so startled, he dropped the tiny eyeglass screwdriver.

"No, it's _not_ all right," Merlin hissed, keeping his voice down. Arthur was walking between the living room and the kitchen, a hand in his trouser pocket, speaking only occasionally but mostly listening to whatever bollocks Bayard was telling him. His head was down, and sometimes he would look up, his lips pressed tight together, and glance in Merlin's direction. That was enough to tell Merlin that things weren't as cut and dried as Will wanted them to believe. 

Will leaned in. "And you think it's all right, me finding out about that little holiday trip you took to that posh hotel, swept up in Captain Prat's arms like you're a bloody pair of newlyweds, only, it's the honeymoon from Hell and some Psycho has already had their way with you?"

"That's different," Merlin snapped. When Will gestured for him to continue, to go ahead and explain, he shut up because he _didn't_ have an explanation. He scrambled for one while Will cleared a space for his heaping plate of food -- at the rate the refrigerator was being cleared out, they'd have to start daily trips to the nearest Tesco -- and sat down to eat one of the two thick turkey-and-tomato sandwiches he'd slapped together. "At least I had backup -- you won't have anyone --"

"Won't I?" Will asked, his cheek round with food, his lips tugged in brash amusement, looking up at him. "What's that you're doing to my phone, then?"

"It's not the same thing!" Merlin said, reaching over to move his dragon out of Will's way before he got crumbs everywhere. The dragon was in complete shutdown, which meant that it didn't look much more impressive than a round lump of something shiny and metallic. An idle thought crossed his mind that he should do something about that, because it would attract attention when flying around in public. Maybe a paint job to make it look more realistic -- which would _still_ attract attention when flying around in public, but at least it wouldn't be shiny and metallic.

Merlin pulled out another chair and sat down, putting tools and phone on the table and willing his fingers to stop shaking. He was angry, anxious, _worried_. Will could take care of himself and always had, but Merlin knew it was only a matter of time before Will stumbled into something he couldn't handle on his own. 

He didn't think that Will would have found that _something_ so soon.

Merlin gave Will a sidelong look. "You don't know what you're getting into."

"I'm not an idiot," Will said.

"That's debatable," Merlin said. "I mean, the fuck you were thinking, getting involved in the first place? Weren't you the one who said that if some government rubberneck ever asked you to stick your neck out for them, you'd rather chop it off yourself?"

"That was back in uni at that peace rally," Will pointed out. "Weren't I trying to pull that blonde? What was her name? Wilma?"

"Emily," Merlin said absentmindedly. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and picked up his tools again, cracking the phone open.

"Oh, yeah. Emily. Coiled tight, that one. Never did get into her pants."

"If memory serves, you did get into her shirt," Merlin said, shaking his head at the shoddy Directory work. They could have at least done more than a half-assed job installing a tracking circuit on the phone. Merlin turned on the solder and picked up fine needle-nose pliers to at least make it look as if it were an integral part of the built-in GPS.

"That's right, I did," Will said, grinning. "They were fake."

Merlin glanced up. "They were?"

"Oh, yeah," Will said, brushing the crumbs from his fingertips before picking up the second half of his first sandwich. "Her flatmate showed me this photo album Emily had. Every picture of her right before uni? Flat as a bloody board."

Merlin chuckled despite himself. He worked in silence for a few minutes, Will chewing noisily next to him, Arthur speaking quietly on the phone. Bohrs had gone for another walk around the block, Kay had made himself scarce, while Perceval and Gwaine were on either side of the wide-open space, one in the living room, the other in the kitchen.

He closed up the casing, running his thumb over the seams, but to his practiced eye, it looked as brand-new as the moment Will had taken it out of the box, showing no signs of his tampering.

Merlin turned the phone on, reached for his laptop, and connected the two. It would be easier to program in a few new features that way.

"You're pissed," Will said after a long silence.

Merlin didn't look up as he plugged in a few small applications, sending them to Will's phone to run, undetected, in the background, barely gobbling up a few kilobytes of memory and data plan. "Understatement of the year."

"And me? Don't I get to be pissed? Look what _you're_ doing --"

"Don't you dare start --"

Will held up a hand to shut Merlin up before he could continue, and this once, Merlin let him have his say. He curled a leg under him, crossed his arms, and waited. "Look."

And that was all Will said before he shook his head and realized that he didn't have anything to say.

"Right," Merlin said, and went back to installing the applications on the phone. He used one of the scripts to add a few lines of code to the phone itself.

Merlin didn't notice when Will got up to take his plate to the kitchen, coming back with a glass of water. He didn't notice when Will slumped in his seat and tapped his fingers on the table surface with impatience. But Merlin certainly did notice when Arthur's hand ran down the curve of his spine and as his lips pressed soft against his ear to whisper, "I need to talk to you. Upstairs."

Merlin barely glanced up from the screen, keying in a few additional commands and ghosting some of the key lines that the Directory had put in, adding a blind carbon copy so that whatever signal the Directory was following, Merlin would be able to do the same. And, finally, as a last resort, Merlin soft-cloned the phone, saving the SIM and other parameters to his hard drive. 

When he looked up, it was to Will's stony, inscrutable stare, his brows a little pinched on his forehead, his lips curled into something that might have been distaste or indigestion.

"What?"

Will gave his head a sharp jerk. Merlin followed the gesture to see Arthur speaking quietly with Kay, who'd returned from wherever it was that he'd gone, to watch Kay nod in agreement, and for Arthur to head up the stairs to the master bedroom. "You and him?"

"Shut up, Will," Merlin said. "If you're going to start on me about --"

"No, no," Will said, leaning forward, arms loosely crossed on the table. "Really. I'm happy for you and all. Seems like a decent bloke."

Merlin's eyes narrowed. "Who are you and what have you done to Will?"

Will flashed him a quick, mocking grin that faded as quickly as it appeared. "Just tell me one thing."

"What?"

"He really didn't hit you, did he?"

Merlin sighed. "If you haven't figured out by now that there's no way I'd let that happen --"

Will sighed in something that sounded like frustration, and he rubbed a brow before holding up his hands. "Right. Okay. Just checking. So who hit you?"

Merlin shook his head, disconnected Will's phone, and shut it down for a reboot. He locked out his computer. "It's a long useless story, but it's sorted. I'll tell you later, all right?"

"Yeah." Will picked up his phone dubiously, poking at the screen. "What did you do?"

"Permanent wiretap," Merlin said, getting up. "We'll be able to hear the entire conversation when you call the phone sex lines."

"Smart job, that. Maybe you'll learn a few things."

"Or crack a gut laughing at your fifteen-year-old fumblings with some bloke with a good enough falsetto to pass for a bird," Merlin said. He headed toward the stairs.

"That _never_ happened!" Will shouted.

"New Year's Eve, our last year of uni!" Merlin shouted back.

"You're the one who reprogrammed my phone for the gay sex line!"

"You never noticed!"

"Hung up quick enough when I heard them talking about shoving their cocks up my arse, didn't I?"

Merlin grinned. "Weren't that quick!"

He didn't wait around to hear Will's strangled retort, but Gwaine's laughter followed him all the way up to the bedroom. Arthur was in full suit now, tie smoothed down, jacket on, and was holstering his gun in the leather shoulder harness he hadn't been wearing when they'd gone downstairs to talk to Will. He shut the door at Arthur's nod.

"Well? What did Bayard say?"

"Confirmed everything, right down to him coming in and having us on a bit," Arthur said. He didn't sound happy.

"And what else?"

"There's no _what else_ , Merlin," Arthur said quietly. "We've got to let him go. If we don't, the game's up."

"What?" Merlin took a step forward. "What are you talking about? We don't have to let him do anything. And you damn well know it's not a game. It doesn't have to happen -- can always put him in witness protection or something, make as if you killed him for -- I don't know, for barging in on us, for trying to shoot you? I could arrange a body dump, make a good enough illusion --"

He trailed off when he saw Arthur's expression. It was the same resigned sort of _we don't have a choice_ that Merlin had seen weighing him down after Bayard told the team that Morgana would be joining them in Paris.

Merlin sagged back against the door.

"We'll watch him," Arthur said. "It just means, if he gets pulled into the NWO, then we'd better do everything we can to make sure we're there to help him in case things go bad."

"Yeah," Merlin said weakly. He didn't want to think about what might happen if they did. Arthur walked over and touched his arm. Merlin reached out and put a hand on Arthur's hip, more to ground himself than anything else.

They stood like that for some time before Arthur cleared his throat and asked, "Who's Theo?"

"Oh, gods," Merlin said, lowering his head until his forehead touched Arthur's shoulder. "Will shouldn't have said anything --"

"Someone I should be worried about?'

"No! No." Merlin looked up, sighing heavily. "No. Look, Theo was some bloke. We went out a couple of times back in uni. I got drunk at a club, he walked me home, I guess maybe he wanted to get lucky, but I slipped on the steps and he lost his grip on me and I fell down the stairs and Will heard me fall and I ended up going to the A&E for a concussion, then I never saw Theo again --"

Arthur silenced him with a kiss. When the pressure faded from his lips, Merlin opened his eyes to see Arthur raise his brows at him. 

"I promise that's all it was," Merlin said.

"I believe you." Arthur held his phone up in front of his face. "Keep this on you. Every half hour, like we agreed."

"Yeah," Merlin said again. Arthur put the phone the right front pocket of Merlin's jeans, his hands proprietary. There was a small pause, a rustle of fabric while Arthur pulled out four bills of twenty quid from his wallet, and more jostling as Arthur manhandled Merlin, putting the money in his other pocket. "What's that for?"

"You might need it," Arthur said quietly. Arthur had gone distant and avoiding, the way he did when he was struggling to hide something he didn't like. If Arthur didn't like something, it was a good bet that Merlin wouldn't either.

"Arthur?" Merlin asked softly. "Do I want to know what Bayard told you?"

Arthur returned to his dresser and moved items around distractedly. "He didn't exactly _say_ something..."

"But?" Merlin chewed his lower lip.

Arthur's eyes caught his in the mirror's reflection, and he sighed softly. "I know how you are, Merlin. Whatever you decide to do -- do it. Just."

He clenched his jaw. 

"What?" Merlin asked.

Arthur turned around and slid a hand down Merlin's side, stopping on top of Merlin's tattoo. It warmed with sudden heat even through the fabric of his shirt, and there was an echo of the dreamy, feminine voice in Merlin's head -- _now you are bound one to the other_ \-- Merlin shook his head, fighting to concentrate on Arthur's voice instead. "How am I going to know if you need help? If something's happened? Where you are?"

Merlin's frown deepened and made his head ache. "Arthur, what --"

"How will I know, Merlin?" Arthur asked. There was a weight and dimension to his words that left an echo in the quiet of the room, whispering again and again in the distance. 

Arthur was worried. Really worried. The way he'd been for a while after Algiers, making sure that there hadn't been any after-effects to what Merlin had gone through. After Paris, fretting over him like a mother hen. This was a different sort of worried, because there was something new going on, and Merlin didn't know what it was.

Merlin opened his mouth to ask questions, to insist on being told, word for word, what Bayard had said, taking a deep breath in preparation for a vehement, angry question. He shut his mouth in the next breath and his shoulders slumped. Whatever was going on, Merlin was going to have to trust that there was a reason why Arthur wasn't telling him.

Instead, he said, "You'll know. It'll be like a dowsing rod."

Arthur considered for a moment, and finally nodded. "All right."

He didn't move, keeping his hand on Merlin's side. "I have a meeting with my father. I don't know when I'll be back."

Merlin chewed his lower lip uncertainly, because there was a _tone_ in Arthur's voice. "All right."

"Don't do anything stupid today, yeah?" Arthur said.

It was that tone again. Quiet and flippant and deceiving, as if he didn't mean anything by it and no knowledge of anything possibly happening as a direct result or despite what he said, while still keeping the warning edge that kept Merlin from asking outright what was going on. Merlin gave Arthur a quick grin that felt weak and empty. "No promises."

Arthur's lips pressed against his, hard and quick and rushed, like a spouse running out the door because they were late. But Arthur wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. "I'm mad for you, you know that?" 

This time, the smile that came to Merlin's lips was more genuine. He sighed softly. "I love you too, you prat."

Arthur's lips quirked into a smirk, some of the tension draining from his shoulders. The second kiss was just as chaste as the first, but soft and warm and lingering. "I'll pick up take-away, yeah? We'll watch a movie tonight."

" **Iron Man**?"

" **Sin City**?" Arthur countered, but it was done gently, with the slightest wince of someone knowing that any plan they made now would most likely be changed later.

Not _most likely_ , Merlin realized with a start. _Definitely_. He swallowed and forced another smile he didn't feel. " **Dark Knight**."

"Hm. **Sin City** ," Arthur said again.

"Tell you what. Bring back ice cream and I'll let you pick whatever movie you want," Merlin said.

"Chocolate?"

"Caramel swirl."

Arthur frowned. "Chocolate's your favourite. Caramel's mine."

Merlin couldn't help the big grin that spread across his face. "I'm in the mood for caramel."

"Shite," Arthur said, closing his eyes, the corners of his mouth tugging into a smile. The smile faded a moment later, and he shook his head. "Shite, Merlin. This isn't easy to start with, but you're making this really hard."

Merlin tilted his head, _really_ wishing he could read minds now. Arthur's behaviour, what he'd said and what he hadn't said, Merlin's growing confusion -- it was giving him a headache. "Hm?"

They stared at each other for a minute. Arthur took a deep, bracing breath. "I'm sorry."

Enlightenment came all at once, and all in the space of a bare few seconds. The tightness around Arthur's mouth. The cold that rushed into his eyes. The tension in his shoulders.

_Oh, no --_

Merlin didn't brace in time. There wasn't anywhere to retreat to. All of his self-defence training disappeared because he never thought he'd need to use it against Arthur.

Arthur's open palm hit him square across the face, hard enough to redden and bruise, the family ring on Arthur's index finger cutting the corner of his lip, the suddenness catching him off guard and sending him to the floor with a thump. Merlin blinked the stars out of his eyes.

He touched his face, opened his mouth wide to make sure his jaw hadn't been unhinged, and tasted blood.

Arthur was kneeling next to him, his breathing short and this side shy of hyperventilating, his brow contorted in a look of pure anguish. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he whispered, over and over again. Arthur cradled Merlin's head. He pulled Merlin into his lap. Arthur's fingers carded through his hair.

The realization that _he just hit me_ came with frozen shock. It took time -- time in which Arthur continued to apologize, his words soft and quiet and small -- for Merlin to shake out of the daze. He only half-listened, but he heard _I'm sorry, Bayard, our stupid covers, goddamn Will, this whole thing_ and the pieces started to fall into place.

Merlin caught Arthur's hand and squeezed. "Breathe."

Arthur's eyes went down, shamed, and he licked his lips. "Merlin --"

Merlin tightened his hand around Arthur's fingers until he could feel the bones crack, and immediately let go, frowning up at Arthur. "You prat. You could've warned me."

He shook his head, avoiding eye contact. His voice was steady, but there was a faint crackle to it, like aluminum foil crumpling and crunching. "I wouldn't have been able to do it if --"

Arthur trailed off. Merlin pushed himself into a sitting position, his legs brushing Arthur's thigh. "It's all right."

"No, it's not," Arthur said. He sat, his knees nearly to his chest, rubbing his eyes. His fingers trembled. 

Merlin understood, even if he didn't really understand. Hitting someone without just cause -- that wasn't Arthur. He couldn't do that on his own. "It's not you. It's the job. Pull yourself together."

A muscle jumped in Arthur's jaw, and Merlin had the distinct, sinking feeling that Arthur was prepared to call the whole thing -- the mission, the assignment, the thing with Will and the NWO -- off right then and there. He scrambled to his knees, leaning in, wiping his hand on his jeans so that he wouldn't get the blood from his cut lip on Arthur's shirt, and grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Fuck. Arthur. Look at me. Come on. Look at me." Arthur eventually managed to raise his chin so that his eyes could make it as far as Merlin's hands, and Merlin decided that was good enough for now. "It's the job. It's not you. You don't hurt people. It's not me, either. Because there's no way I'd let you get away with it otherwise, and you know I can stop you. That I would have. It's probably a good thing that you didn't tell me, or you'd never have managed to lay a hand on me, yeah?"

Arthur didn't move, didn't answer, didn't _breathe_ , but at least the muscle in his jaw wasn't threatening to snap. Merlin took it as a good sign.

"You wouldn't hit me if there wasn't a reason. It's the job, right? What did Bayard want? What did he tell you? It's something to do with Will," Merlin guessed and bit his lower lip thoughtfully. A sharp pain tugged from the corner where he was still bleeding, and he could taste blood again. He pressed his lips together to stem the flow, unwilling to let go of Arthur just yet. "With setting up his cover. What is it, Arthur? What am I supposed to do?"

Arthur took a shaky breath and said, "I hit you... because I think you've been telling Will things you shouldn't."

"Right. Like you punching me in the first place. Maybe something else? Something to do with the work you're having me do?"

"Yeah," Arthur said, raising his eyes to look at Merlin, but he couldn't seem to look past the cut on Merlin's face, the handprint Merlin could feel burning hot on his cheek. "Reconfiguring guidance systems."

"For missiles?"

"For distance-controlled sniper rifles," Arthur said, and Merlin remembered the equipment that Gwaine had been working on with Owain back on the base, splicing sniper rifles with video cameras and telephoto lens and GPS and terrain curvature and computer calculations. The system didn't come anywhere near the range of a trained sniper, and Merlin had been recruited to fix the math. "R&D at Pendragon has a new setup based on Gwaine's design. Their code is crap and nowhere near the prototype you helped him build."

"Right," Merlin said, distantly remembering Gwaine mentioning getting kickbacks for his patent. With the military shifting resources heavily toward technological warfare, Gwaine wasn't the only one who was coming up with new battlefield weapons. Owain was working on some sort of new chemical compound with a faster metre-per-second blast rate, while Perceval, on his downtime, sketched out new heavy gun designs. The only member of the team who wasn't officially working for Pendragon was Merlin. The reminder stung, but Merlin ignored it. "Go on."

"Will doesn't know anything more than that. You've been pumping him for shooting stats because Gwaine's crap at recording his parameters, and Will's got access to shoot books from every greenie to sharpshooter that the army's ever had. He's been feeding you this information. I found out about it, and between that and Will showing up on my doorstep yelling at me for hitting you, I'm pissed because you might've told him more than you should have."

"Okay. Right," Merlin said, nodding. He moved one hand from Arthur's shoulder to his cheek, and, Arthur looked up at him, startled. His blue eyes were made all the more blue by the faint glisten of tears, the little bit of red rimming the edges. "So you hit me, and the only reason why I'm not in worse shape is because you've got a meeting and Will's downstairs."

Arthur nodded.

"And now what?"

They stared at each other for some time before Arthur ran his hand up Merlin's forearm. "You tell me. What do you do now?"

"I don't know. I don't know" A small sound halfway between a scoff and a laugh escaped Merlin, and he hung his head, shaking it. Here he was, asking Arthur explain his role, and he was having trouble getting into his own. "Shite. So if Will doesn't know much, then I haven't told him anything. I've learned my lesson. I'm careful, I don't want to piss you off. And here you're hitting me because you think I'm telling everyone your secrets and you're accusing me of lying, and I'm angry and hurt --"

Merlin glanced up at Arthur, who was looking distant, detached. "Yeah."

"Would I leave? After you've gone?"

"Would you?"

Merlin thought about the others, playing the role of bodyguards. "Could I?"

Arthur glanced away briefly, and nodded. "I already spoke to them. Bohrs is heading out for the morning. Kay will... If Will doesn't do anything stupid, Kay will be fine."

Merlin's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, Kay will be fine?"

"Just follow Will's lead," Arthur said. He reached in slowly, as if not entirely certain he had the right to do it anymore. Merlin crossed the rest of the distance and kissed him, mindful of his cut lip, and there was a soft sigh and a shoulder sag of relief from Arthur. Arthur stood up, fidgeting nervously, unsure what to do with himself. "Help him get set up with Freya and the others. Show them that you and Will are still close. Let them see that Will still has some influence with you. That way, they know they haven't lost every route to get to you --"

"No, that's stupid," Merlin said, getting up. He glanced in the mirror; his cheek was bright red. The cut in the corner of his mouth wasn't an improvement. "Why do we want them to think that Will's got any kind of pull with me? That's splitting up their options. They won't need to deal with you then, if they have an easier choice --"

"It's not about their options or our options. This is a job, Merlin. It's Bayard's idea --"

"And we know just how _fantastic_ his ideas are," Merlin said. He resisted the urge to gesture at his bruised face.

Arthur grunted in agreement. He finished making himself presentable, pocketing a few more items from the dresser. Merlin felt suddenly conscious of the money Arthur had given him, and tried to figure out what he'd need it for.

"What does Kilgarrah say?" Merlin asked, crossing his arms.

Arthur glanced at him and shook his head. "I don't know. I wasn't going to mention names in front of Will. I'll call the Major from the car, and I'll text you as soon as I hear."

Arthur hesitated, the back of his hand just brushing Merlin's bruising cheek. "Be careful."

"Yes, sir," Merlin said. 

"Wait until I'm gone before you go downstairs. Then give it a bit more to let Bohrs head out."

"All right," Merlin said. He hugged himself tighter.

Arthur's smile was small and faint, disappearing beneath ice and distance. He shrugged his coat and left the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Photo frames vibrated and tilted; the mirror on the dresser trembled. Merlin stood there, shoving his hands in his pockets, barely reacting.

Hell, he barely twitched when bombs went off around him on the battlefield, and the door slamming was just another inconvenient, annoying explosion.

He heard voices drifting up the stairs. A scuffle of sound and then a brief silence before the zone alarm for the front door beeped. The silence stretched before the conversation downstairs continued; after a minute, it was drowned out by the telly.

Merlin went to the bathroom and poked at his face in the mirror. He ran a towel under the cold water, squeezed out the excess, and pressed the coolness on the bruise. By the time he heard Bohrs call out -- perhaps too loudly -- that he was leaving, the redness had abated.

There would be a small yellowing bruise. And the fat, cut lip.

No hiding those.

The zone alarm beeped again. Bohrs was gone. Merlin paced in place, hands in his pockets, weighing his options. He had his cell phone. He had Arthur's money. There had been enough hints that he and Will would be making a quick getaway, and a quick getaway meant that he wouldn't have very much on his person to begin with. He wouldn't be expected to carry his wallet inside the house. He wouldn't have any of his electronic toys or tools or weapons. 

Merlin stared down at his bare feet.

He could reasonably be expected to be wearing socks. Merlin sat on the edge of the bed, fidgeting. He got up a second later and went to get a pair of socks.

They'd grab his shoes on the way out. He could do without a coat; it was mild enough for that, and since Will's kit was right besides the front door, he could probably borrow a jumper if it got cold.

Merlin's stomach rumbled. He hadn't eaten yet, and he dimly remembered the protein shake that Arthur had made for him earlier. 

He checked the time and made his way downstairs. He looked around long enough to see that Will had made himself comfortable on the sofa, remote to the telly in hand, legs crossed at the ankles and feet on the coffee table. Gwaine and Perceval were Arthur's shadows today, and Bohrs, true to his earlier announcement, was gone. Kay was sitting on the plush armchair off to the side, making small talk about footie.

Merlin turned into the kitchen before either of them noticed him. His face still stung, his lip throbbed.

The protein shake was lukewarm. He swirled it around in the glass and drank it in one go. It didn't matter how many times he told Arthur that he didn't like stupid protein shakes -- Arthur insisted that Merlin drink them on days when he didn't have time to make Merlin a solid breakfast -- never mind that Merlin could make his own. The protein shake was tolerable, a bit on the bland side, and it did nothing for the cramping hollows of Merlin's stomach.

Will had sown a path of destruction in the kitchen when he'd gone on his earlier raid and pillage; Merlin slapped together a sandwich for himself and nibbled at it while putting everything away. Finally, he had no further excuse to avoid the others, and went into the living room to sit down on the couch next to Will, yanking the remote out of his hand.

"I were watching that!"

"Don't care. You don't live here," Merlin said, flipping through the channels. For once, Will didn't make a grab for the remote. 

The way Will was staring at Merlin's cut lip might have something to do with it.

"What?"

"Nothing." Will shifted in his seat and pretended to be watching the talk show that Merlin left on the telly before boredom set in and he continued to surf through the channels until he found a made-for-TV movie featuring a former child actor who couldn't and likely wouldn't ever make it on the big screen ever again.

Merlin glanced sideways to catch Will staring at his face. "Will you quit it?"

"Just tell me one thing," Will said, clearing his throat. It was repeat of their earlier conversation, weighed down with slow words and meaningful eyebrow wriggles that Merlin couldn't miss if they were painted a fluorescent neon green.

He was supposed to play the game. They were working. He swallowed a sigh and snapped out, "What?"

"So. You and your Arthur. You can tell me. I won't lose my temper."

"Bollocks."

"I won't shoot him. I swear."

"You had better not."

"I promise on my grandmother's grave --"

"How is Nana Millie? Mum said she saw her at the store last week. Oh, wait. Did you mean Gramma Theresa? I hear she was going hiking in the Outbacks in the fall." 

"Hiking up Kilimanjaro, actually," Will corrected with a smirk. His expression grew serious. "Arthur hit you, didn't he?"

Kay, being the epitome of discretion, stood up with a noisy creak and walked to the kitchen.

"Fuck off, Will," Merlin said, his voice low and hoarse. The force of his words made his cut lip sting and crack open. Merlin pressed two fingers against it to stop the bleeding. Will reached for a crumpled paper towel from the coffee table and offered it to Merlin. "Seriously? A dirty towel? Are you trying to make my face fall off from gangrene?"

"Are you calling me dirty?"

"If the shoe fits --"

Will shoved. Merlin shoved back. It was very half-hearted. They watched the movie in silence for a quarter hour before Will pointed at the screen and said, "Her tits are fake."

"I don't give a shite about her tits. _His_ arse is fake."

"His arse?"

"Butt implants," Merlin said. "Watch him walking. His arse doesn't move the right way."

Will's eyes narrowed and he watched the male lead on the plasmascreen. "God, that's disturbing. One cheek is higher than the other."

"Told you."

The silence fell again, but it didn't last long. Merlin broke it with a grumbling, "This is all Freya's fault, you know."

Will made a small noise of agreement.

"If she weren't convinced bloody Bryn's the love of her life, she could actually have a normal go of it. A good job, married to a nice bloke, two point one kids, maybe even a dog, one of those little yappy fluffballs that everyone threatens to use as a football," Merlin said.

"You'd be the nice bloke in this scenario, then?"

"Fuck, no," Merlin scoffed. "Me with a girl? Kissing Freya was like kissing a glossy, only with less wank material for afters."

Will snorted. "Depends on the picture."

"Exactly my point," Merlin said. He watched the movie for a while before lowering his voice. "Why'd you get into this, Will?"

"Think I'd let you have all the fun?"

"Jesus, Will --" Merlin rubbed his forehead, feeling a dull ache. "You don't know what you're in for."

"I know exactly what I'm in for."

"You know, it's not too late to get out of this. We can make a few calls, maybe arrange for you to get banged up. Your story could be, you never made it to London, got yourself tossed in the brig for going AWOL --"

"Merlin. Stop."

"Or you can just go and tell Freya that everything's fine, if anything, I'm the one giving Arthur a hard time and to get off my neck --"

Will lunged at him, and there was a tussle on the couch where Merlin somehow ended up in a headlock, a hand over his mouth. "Merlin! No, seriously, stop. Shut it for a minute and listen."

There was a slight shift of movement, a stretching of the spine, and Merlin caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Will checking out the area before sinking back down to the couch. 

"You gonna be quiet and listen?" Merlin nodded. Will let him go, and continued in Welsh, "It's real cute watching you try to be all protective, but we both know I'm the one watching out for you, yeah? This is happening. I don't care what you say. The minute I heard about all this, the second I saw the vid from your little holiday trip, Freya crying on the phone, weren't any question. I'm doing this, you understand me? It's not about the fucking Directory or fucking Smithy or even Arthur fucking Pendragon. It's about me making sure you don't get yourself killed, and if it means doing it from the inside-in, then I'll do it."

Merlin opened his mouth to protest, but Will held a warning finger up in his face. Merlin clamped his mouth shut, hissed out a breath, and sank against the couch pillows.

"That's the spirit," Will said, still speaking Welsh. He glanced over his shoulder. "Arthur spoke to you, yeah? Told you what's next?"

"Yeah."

"All right, then. You ready, Merls?"

"No."

"I need you to take care of this one --" Will thumbed toward Kay.

"I'm not using my magic on Kay," Merlin said resolutely. He absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent, would not use his magic to hurt his team. Will knew better than to ask that.

"Orright. Figures that you'd make me do this the hard way."

Will got up, picked up his coat where he'd flung it earlier, and put it on. He drifted toward the dining room table where Kay had left his belt and boots, looping the belt through his pants first before hopping on one foot, then the other, to put his shoes on.

"You leaving us?" Kay said, drifting out of the kitchen, his eyes narrowed. He crossed his arms over his chest, but Merlin wasn't fooled by the loose line of his shoulders -- Kay was never really relaxed. He considered warning Will that Kay could probably kill him with his pinkie finger, but before he had the chance, Will strode over to where Kay was standing with the slow, sure glide of an animal handler trying to approach a coiled, snarling wildcat.

"Yeah, need to head out," Will said. "Put the plan in motion and all that. The sooner the better. Told Freya I'd be in on the noon train, that I'd call her if I needed a ride, but I figure I should do that from the station, or there'll be _questions_."

Kay raised both brows, but looked otherwise unimpressed. "You need a lift?"

"Would you give me one?"

"No."

"Nice one, mate, I knew you were a pal," Will said, and as Merlin watched, he did the single most stupid thing he'd ever seen anyone do where Kay was concerned. He tackled him, shoulder to Kay's chest, and rammed him back into the kitchen island. The impact was hard enough that the cutlery rattled and the wood groaned.

Kay didn't make a sound. Not a grunt of pain, not a whisper of surprise. He reacted instantly, clubbing his hands down on Will's spine with enough force to snap it. 

Will fell to his knees, stepping up after a wobbly instant to grab Kay off his feet and to flip him over his shoulder. Kay's landing was awkward, but he tucked his landing and rolled. Just as Kay got to his feet again, Will's next tackle shoved him into the wall.

Plaster dust crumbled. A framed photograph fell off its hook, crashing onto the floor.

Merlin was on his feet and around the couch without knowing how he got there, moving to get between them before he realized that he _wasn't supposed to_.

Kay raised his arms enough to block the blows to his lower torso, taking the first opening to elbow Will across the face. Will staggered, Kay closed the distance between them, his arms loose at his sides, with no warning of what he would do next. Kay swung a closed fist, connected with Will's head, but Will was already moving away, raising a hand to deflect the strike. Will's boot came down on the inside of Kay's knee. The angle was wrong and it was _thankfully_ not enough to do some serious damage, but it was enough to drop Kay to the small throw rug in the narrow corridor leading to the stairs.

Will kicked up, aiming for Kay's face. Kay's crossed arms in front of his body took the impact. And the second. And the third. The momentum of each blow slid the carpet back until Kay was at the foot of the stairs.

Will advanced; Kay jumped from his crouch, arms wrapped around Will's waist and tossing him off balance. There was a scramble for footing, a struggle for leverage, a frozen moment where both of them were locked in a wrestling pose while both considered their options before Kay abruptly changed tactics, going slack in Will's arms and slipping out of his grasp like a greased pig. Will swung; Kay dodged. Kay punched, Will blocked. Will feinted and connected, but the act cost him when Kay's fist knocked his head back.

They were evenly matched. They were nearly the same height, nearly the same weight. They had the same reach, the same training, the same streetwise instincts. For a moment, Merlin thought that Kay would have the upper hand, because he had more martial arts and close combat encounters under his belt, because Kay had more endurance than he'd ever seen Will possess, because Arthur was his Captain and had pushed Kay to train harder, faster, longer.

But he was wrong.

Will got the upper hand _somehow_ , and the fight ended with a spectacular crash of tossed couch and cleaved coffee table. Kay was sprawled across the debris, his face bloody, his body limp. Will backed away, tripped on a pillow, a throw rug, a minuscule crack in the floor, and Merlin caught and steadied him, wide-eyed.

"I can't believe you -- you could've killed him --"

Will raised an arm and pointed at Kay. He was breathing hard. "Why. Why didn't you. Warn me. Bastard was tougher. Tougher than he looks."

"You arse, you complete fucking plonker --" Merlin left Will to stagger and find his balance on his own and went to Kay's side, crouching down. He checked all the vital signs. Pulse. Breathing. Circulation. Kay's chest was rising and falling in a steady, if rapid rate. His heart rate was strong. The blood was from minor cuts and scrapes, and nothing seemed broken.

A pained moan escaped Kay's lips when Merlin double-checked his skull for fractures, and, just to be on the safe side, he whispered a small spell to accelerate the healing of injuries. He didn't know if it would work -- healing spells only worked sporadically when he used them as a child to hide evidence of Doing Things His Mum Would Disapprove of, but it wasn't long before Kay started to stir.

"What the fuck -- You didn't just try to heal him?" Will asked.

"'Course I did -- Kay doesn't deserve this --"

"Kay's fine, just knocked out. Now get your arse under your bloody cover. Let's go." Will grabbed Merlin's arm and dragged him to the front door.

  
**ooOOoo**   


It was 1251. By now, Merlin and Will were well away from the flat. By now, they were on their way to see Freya, lost somewhere within the invisible borders of NWO territory.

A half-dozen attempts to reach Major Kilgarrah had resulted in busy signals or ring-throughs to voice mail, and Arthur could only think that Kilgarrah was on board with the plan, avoiding Arthur entirely, or completely unaware of what was going on. He tried not to think too much about it. He couldn't. He _shouldn't_. He had faith in Merlin's ability to get himself out of a bad situation -- more so now that he knew about Merlin's magic and going on his gut feeling that Will wouldn't betray his best mate.

Still.

Arthur's insides clenched with worry the way they did every time he sent his men on a mission. He was tense, distracted, unable to focus on the meeting -- he was the youngest member at a table neatly filled with grey- and silver-haired directors -- but he was vaguely aware that the current matter under discussion had to do with the newest legislations being lobbied through Parliament to restrict the gun industry. The sales were to be curtailed by a heavy tax; every person purchasing a weapon would be required to present a valid and appropriate firearms license and present themselves for registration in a national database that would be made internationally available for police investigations; every manufacturing branch of every weapons company would be required to have a government employee on site to personally inspect every shipping container and ensure they matched the manifests.

It was no wonder that Arthur couldn't pay attention. The board of directors had talked about exactly the same topics for _years_ , but never seemed to notice that the legislations that threatened their bottom line -- if their bottom line was their yearly bonus on top of their already lucrative salaries -- were recurrent on a set cycle, short-lived, and with little staying power as long as certain government officials received their campaign donations. While the others expounded the virtues of one candidate over another, slam their fists on the table against the ignorant members of Parliament who didn't know what they were talking about, and generally got hot under the collar in a way that had their feeble old hearts pounding again, Arthur slumped in his seat and played on his phone.

Despite the glares and murmured _why is he here if he's not taking this seriously_ , _I don't remember him acting up this much before -- do you_ , _oh definitely, don't you remember when he got away with murder that summer he interned_ and _why doesn't Uther do something about him_ from those nearest to him, Arthur was paying attention. Not as much as he should be, he knew, but enough to know that, for the moment, the round table discussion was nothing more than a whole lot of chest-beating and woe-are-we wailing from men who really should be acting a little bit more professional. It hadn't escaped Arthur's notice how the Colonel sat back in his chair, elbow on the armrest, finger over his lips, leaning forward with every indication that he was listening and seriously considering everything that was being said, encouraging the discussion by body language alone.

Arthur wasn't fooled. Uther's eyes were crinkled in a way that he was concentrating on something, and his attention was focusing on the laptop strategically positioned in front of him, the screen dark to anyone who dared to lean in and see what he was studying. Arthur was too far away to try, and he was tempted to push the limits of what he was allowed to do under his cover and to walk behind Uther to announce, "Glad to see I'm not the only one bored out of my goddamn skull. What's that you're watching? The soaps?"

Uther might have been read into some of what Arthur was working on at present, but there was a limit to his generosity. Arthur had a feeling that embarrassing Uther in front of the "distinguished board of directors" wouldn't go over very well.

The current speaker was a short, rotund man. This man had cornered Arthur before the meeting began to pat his belly in deep thought, beginning the conversation with a pompous, "Ah, yes, you're young Pendragon. You weren't out in the army half as long as you should've been, were you?" to which Arthur smiled the smile Morgana called his shark smile and said, "Still was a damn sight longer than you, if you want to split hairs". Arthur couldn't remember his name, but whoever he was, he was trying to rouse the others into a vote for something or another. Probably the breakfast buffet menu of their next meeting.

Arthur's phone vibrated and a text message came in from Merlin, flooding him with relief.

1300\. _Wtng 4 Frya. Dont knw when Ill txt nxt. Dont wrry._

Arthur hit reply. _Txt the minute u can._

He glanced around the room. Uther was still involved with his laptop. A different board member stood up to second the first's motion and went into a long, elaborate spiel to explain why. No one seemed to notice -- or were trying their hardest not to notice -- that Arthur had stopped playing his game to answer a text.

Every time Arthur though about Merlin, his tattoo seemed to _pull_ him in a certain direction. The pull grew stronger, more vivid, more distinct, whenever Arthur found himself imagining everything that might be happening to Merlin. There were so many things that might happen to Merlin as long as he was anywhere within a hundred feet of Bryn and the rest of the NWO pillocks. The only reason Arthur wasn't marching out of the board meeting _right now_ to follow the dull ache was because Kay had texted him an hour ago to advise that he'd picked up on their trail. Kay might not have Gwaine's stealth, but what he had were street smarts, and he had an edge to him that Gwaine didn't have, allowing him to fit in better in the rough parts of town. If anyone could keep tabs on Merlin and walk around unnoticed, it was Kay.

There was also the strange sense of calm that washed over him even as he reached out to _feel_ where Merlin was -- and both sensations, alone or together, were equally disorienting, and he wished he could ask Merlin what it would be like if he were in danger. Arthur supposed it wouldn't be the calm, soothing feeling he was getting now.

Someone cleared his throat nearby. When that didn't get Arthur's attention, the person next to him elbowed him sharply, and he nearly dropped his phone. David Murray -- unlike the other men, he feigned youth (for his youthful mistress) by dyeing his hair -- raised a _pay attention_ brow.

"What?"

"How do you vote?"

All eyes were on him in this instant, even the Colonel's. Uther hadn't shifted from his position at the head of the table, and another finger joined the first across his lips in a gesture that might be an attempt to hide a rare smirk or his usual scowl.

"Did everyone vote already?" Arthur asked, straightening in his seat. It was a better question than _what are we voting on_ , even if everyone else already knew that Arthur had hardly been paying attention during the meeting.

"Yes."

"Is my vote the tie-breaker?" 

"No."

"Then who cares about my vote?"

A murmur rippled through the room. Several of the older men huffed under their breath while the rest of them exchanged glances and meaningful expressions. Someone had the gall to mumble under their breath something that was probably along the lines of _and this is the what we're going to get when Pendragon retires_ but that he couldn't quite hear over the quiet tumult going on. 

The Colonel shifted in his seat, and it was the feeble creak of new leather that silenced the meeting room. Everyone glanced at Uther expectantly, as if they fully expected him to say something to put the young upstart in his place.

Instead, he said, "Gentlemen, if there is no other pressing business --" The tone of his voice implied that even if there was, this wasn't the time to bring it up. "-- we'll reconvene in two weeks. Good afternoon. Arthur, if you have a moment?"

Binders were slapped shut, laptops closed, and the cell phones came out in preparation for their next task for the day. A few people started to rise --

"I don't, actually," Arthur said sincerely, because there was something else he would rather be doing right now, and it involved catching up to Kay so that he could be there if Merlin and Will needed an escape.

\-- and more than a few people froze in mid-movement, eyes doe-wide as they tried to decide if it was safer for them to stay in the room where they would be able to duck flying projectiles, or if they should retreat as quickly as possible and find the nearest solid cement block to stop the bullets. 

"Make the time," Uther said sternly. His tone might have been enough for any of the other men in the room to twitch in alarm and stumble over their apologies, but Arthur had heard every variation of "stern" on the Uther scale of discipline, and this one merely rated a six out of twenty.

Arthur spread his hands and released an exaggerated sigh. He had nothing to collect up -- he hadn't even bothered with the meeting minutes or the file folders or the reports that he normally would have brought along, and his laptop was securely locked in his desk drawer back in his office -- so, instead, slumped more in his seat and continued to play Bubble Poppers on his iPhone.

The room cleared in ten seconds flat -- a new record, if the record generated by the meeting two years ago when there had been rumblings of a hostile takeover attempt by King Limited was still standing. Arthur heard the scrape of a chair, the footsteps of someone reaching to shut and lock the door, the rattle of the blinds being lowered all around the glass-partitioned room.

If there was something that Uther Pendragon was well-known for, even if people only dared to whisper about it behind cupped hands after ensuring that Uther himself wasn't around to overhear, it was his paranoia. Few people outside of the family or Uther's inner circle would ever know that this paranoia had been born out of decades of betrayal of one sort or another, from spies among his ranks during his army days to industrial espionage when he was working out of their two-car garage in the early days of the company. It was subtle and not at all endearing, the way that the Colonel would run background checks on every single one of his employees and reading them at night before bed, the way he would blatantly break privacy laws and personally investigate personnel that he thought were acting out of sorts, the way he ordered upgrades to the security system, including video and audio, throughout the building, year in and year out, but refused to have the same installed in his own offices.

This extreme was the one and only reason why Arthur didn't believe that the weapon thefts that had occurred over the last decade, if not more, was the work of a disgruntled employee or from insider information willingly distributed to the enemy. Uther trusted no one. There were times that Arthur wondered if Uther even trusted his own children.

As Arthur watched, Uther flicked a switch on the underside of the wall of shelves, physically turning off the video cameras in the room. He opened a secret panel that was known only to a handful of people in the building. The polished cedar clicked, slid inwards, and shifted to the side. A computer screen blipped to life, and Uther went through the systematic process of scanning the room for bugs and turning on the hair-thin copper netting that would prevent any electronic signals from leaving the room or from seeing in.

Uther left the panel open, and went to his laptop. He punched a few keys, and, satisfied with the results, sat down in his chair. It was then and only then that Uther said, "I am glad you skipped this stage of your development when you were a teenager. How long do you expect that you'll be able to keep up the act?"

Arthur made another quick check to see if Merlin had texted him in the last few seconds before putting his phone down with effort. "As long as I need to."

"Must be difficult, playing the role of a spoiled child," Uther said.

"Not really. I'm finding it quite fun. All the things I missed out on as a child." Arthur kept his face impassive, but it was hard to suppress his smirk at Uther's frown. His father had been strict, stoic, even emotionally distant, and Arthur was the first to admit that outright fear (carefully disguised as respect) was the only thing that kept him in line growing up. That fear faded too slowly during his teenage years, until nothing remained now but the respect his father had always commanded in others.

Uther shook his head and exhaled a heavy breath, sitting back in his chair. He steepled his fingers and stared at Arthur over his hands with a slack face, thin lips, and a cold, foreboding gaze. He didn't speak, showing every indication of getting his thoughts in order while simultaneously intimidating his opponent -- whoever that opponent might be -- with a steely glare.

Nothing that Arthur hadn't seen before; nothing that he hadn't endured in the past. Arthur could outwait him. 

"You should take care that you won't antagonize the board of directors to the point where they will elect to vote you as owner in name only on the day that I retire," Uther began, and Arthur chillingly remembered Olaf's hints of Uther's retirement. At the same time couldn't help but feel jaded by the warning, because he well and fully intended on replacing each member of the board with someone who was more forward-thinking than a band of yes-men who only wanted to stay on Uther's good side in exchange for profits and bonuses.

Between Arthur and Morgana, there were _many_ measures already in place to prevent the kettle of circling vultures in business suits from wrenching the company out of family hands at the earliest opportunity, and Arthur had it on good authority -- direct from Uther's lips himself, along with several documents that Arthur had counter-signed -- that Uther had put in place similar roadblocks. He took the warning for what it was worth -- a reminder that once his assignment was complete, Arthur still had _other_ responsibilities.

"As long as I'm antagonizing them into believing that you must be ready to hand the reins over to _them_ , that's all that matters," Arthur said, getting up. He walked around the table, carefully looking around for anything that the other board members might have left behind.

"As long as that's all it is," Uther said, watching him without comment.

Arthur wasn't stupid, and even listened to Merlin every now and then. Bugs were transmitters, while an outside source with a powerful enough antenna and sound filters could amplify conversations a block away. Both could be negated by the copper filament netting technology that Pendragon's R&D never made available on the open market, but nothing could stop a digital recorder already in the room from capturing the conversation, retrieved later by a janitor or secretary or even by the person who left it there in the first place.

He didn't find anything. He sat down next to the Colonel, crossing his legs at the knee, and clasped his hands in his lap, elbows on the armrests of his chair.

"What's this about, then? Are we going to go over numbers until enough time has passed, and I limp out as if I've been spanked?"

"I've never spanked you in your life," Uther said pointedly, his gaze drifting toward his laptop.

 _No, but you've slapped me plenty of times._ Arthur kept that thought to himself. Instead, he said, "Yes, sir."

"Has there been any word on Morgana's kidnapping attempts?" Uther asked suddenly. 

"That's not my area," Arthur said, even though that wasn't entirely the truth. Between Kilgarrah, Bayard, and Olaf, the matter was being looked into, but the trickle of information coming his way wasn't coming fast enough. Service in the military was all about making the right contacts, and Arthur had his own resources.

Morgause Delamontagne -- Morgause Gorlois -- had all but disappeared. The official cover story from her superiors was that she had gone deep undercover to break up a terrorist ring in an undisclosed location and would be remaining undercover for a long as it took to gather intel on other similar organizations. Unofficially, the Interpol brass was in something of a panic, and had begun their own private investigation.

Someone as highly placed as Morgause -- in charge of the Interpol division search-and-locate for terrorism and other threats -- wouldn't have broken cover in a risky move to kidnap Morgana if there wasn't something else going on. An accelerated timetable, a shift in leadership, _something_ involving Morgana, Arthur, Uther, the company.

A small niggling doubt suggested that, perhaps, this Morgause was being completely misinterpreted, that Arthur wasn't being given all the information that he needed to make an appropriate evaluation of the situation, that perhaps she really was working on the side of good and was investigating the NWO on her own. It was a small, niggling doubt that quickly vanished when Arthur remembered how Morgause had left Morgana to the mercy of the sorcerers in the alley.

Had she done it on purpose? If she had, why wouldn't she have stayed behind to ensure that Morgana was taken care of? There were simply too many questions.

Uther raised a sharp eyebrow. "You haven't looked into it at all?"

"Father," Arthur said calmly, "You know as well as I do that I have my orders, and getting distracted by the attempted kidnapping --"

"Arthur," Uther said, in the _I may not always know when you're lying, but I don't believe you right now_ tone that Arthur knew so well and often used to his advantage when needing to get out of trouble as a teenager. Things being as they were right now, Arthur decided not to add to Uther's aggravation.

"I've looked into it, and I can assure you that, at the moment, I haven't gotten any further than you have," Arthur said. There was no doubt that Uther's information network was far more extensive than Arthur's, and it was a good bet that if Uther knew something more than Arthur, he would be _advising_ Arthur to look into that matter personally instead of asking him what he knew.

Arthur's answer mollified Uther, because his attention drifted to his laptop. "I'm told that it has to do with the missing weapons."

Uther typed in a few commands into his laptop, waited a moment, and slid the laptop around for Arthur to see. There was a spreadsheet across the screen, with columns of numbers in black and white in each cell. A graph off to the side in the program's default colours summed up the breadth of the data in contrasting jagged lines -- enough of a visual to give an overview of the data, but not enough detail to give Arthur an idea of the respective scales of the manufacturing output and the net losses. The output was crude and uncreative, without colourful borders or significant headers which meant that Uther had compiled the data himself, rather than having an assistant download the data and pretty it up with presentation colours.

Arthur didn't need to lean in to look at the numbers and the graph in greater detail to know what they were for -- the graph alone mirrored the one he had created for himself using the data that Merlin had illicitly taken from the Pendragon network -- but he did anyway. He scrolled down the data points and noticed that it wasn't as thorough a database as the one he'd put together, but it was enough to show just how badly the company had been bleeding losses. The last six months alone showed a drastic five to eight percent decrease in net profits from the thefts alone.

Schooling his expression carefully, Arthur gestured to the laptop and said, "I'm surprised this wasn't stopped a long time ago."

"The police are useless," Uther bit out.

"That's not what I mean," Arthur said. He stared at his father for nearly a minute before he spoke again, trying to ease the way Uther's eyes narrowed in something approximating confusion. "You employ several security forces. You have experienced investigators. The company fosters a R&D department of the best and brightest, and our electronic securities department, while small, rivals Lightforce's."

Lightforce Incorporated was a company that made Pendragon's ES department look tiny and frail in comparison, and Pendragon subcontracted work to them on a regular basis when the ES department couldn't handle the excess work.

"How is it that in the last ten years, we haven't found where the weapons are going, much less who has been taking them?"

Uther tapped a finger on the table without rhythm -- a sure sign that he didn't like the question -- for nearly a minute before saying, "Every lead led to a dead end."

"I see," Arthur said neutrally, because there wasn't anything else that he could say without sounding as if he knew better than his father, which, in this instance, he probably did. Uther obviously didn't think his tone was neutral enough, because he leaned forward in narrow-eyed challenge.

"What would you have done? What would you have me do now?" It wasn't often -- in fact, it never happened -- that Uther asked Arthur's opinion, and the only times he did ask, it was to ridicule every single thing that Arthur might propose as useless, uninventive, and a waste of time.

Arthur knew that tactic too well, though it had taken him years before he trained himself out of responding to Uther's goading with indignant sputters and explanations, and to politely step around the land mine.

"I'm certain that you've already tried everything that I might come up with, father," Arthur said. He'd read all the security reports. Every tactic, including spending millions to borrow satellite time for surveillance and installing transmitters on every single gun that left the warehouse for six months, had been attempted, only to be fail miserably when the tracking devices completely and inexplicably failed.

Arthur had shaken Merlin awake late one night when he couldn't sleep and had pulled his laptop open to do more work -- only to realize the answer to all his questions had been staring him in the face all along. He had been nearly smacked in the face by Merlin's frantic flail when his army-trained reactions had him nearly rolling out of bed and scrambling for his clothes.

_"Can magic disable tracking bugs?" Arthur asked._

_"Yeah, I suppose," Merlin said, blearily wiping his face with his hands. In the pale blue backlit glow from the laptop, Merlin looked far more tantalizing than he had a right to be. Every sharp line of him, long, lean, and wiry, was highlighted by shadow and light._

_"How would it work?" Arthur asked, struggling to concentrate. A naked Merlin could completely ruin his ability to focus, particularly when Merlin was naked, bed-tousled, and sleepy loose and limber._

_"Fuck, Arthur. You woke me up for an electronics lesson? It couldn't have waited until morning?" Merlin sat down on the edge of the bed, his back to Arthur, the blankets shoved away. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees in a pose that made Arthur press his lips together to keep himself from groaning in a very embarrassing and telling way, and scratched his fingers through his unruly hair. Merlin's voice was rough and grumpy, but he said, "It's just. I don't know. Manipulating radio waves or focusing magic in one spot and holding it until there's enough energy to emit a mini-EMP. There's lots of ways to do it. Weren't you there when Prof D gave that lecture?"_

_"What about satellites?" Arthur had a feeling he already had already seen the satellites taken care of by way of magic, once, even though he hadn't realized it at the time. He would never forget the mission when Merlin and Gwaine and Perceval and Owain were to eliminate a target, only to lose contact with them when a dust storm rose up out of a perfectly clear sky._

_Merlin sat up straight with an annoyed grunt, throwing his arms up in the air. His hands dropped down onto his head and he stretched, yawning loudly, the way he always did on mornings when they weren't rushing off on a mission or when he was taking is sweet time rolling out of bed after a lie-in. Arthur watched the curve of Merlin's spine and followed it all the way down to the crack of his arse, right where the blankets offered up nothing but a teasing hint, and he swallowed hard._

_"Thick enough cloud cover would do it. A decent illusion. We did demos back on the Directory compound, remember? They show up on camera, but the sorcerer has to be pretty good at it if they'll pass muster. Otherwise it looks like a bad Photoshop job, you know the ones, with women on magazine covers with a third arm or a skinny neck or a five-inch waist. Really, Arthur? Where_ were _you during the lectures?"_

_Arthur nodded to himself. It wasn't that if he didn't remember but more that he wanted to hear confirmation from Merlin. Seeing magic performed by a Directory sorcerer was one thing; hearing an old coot who didn't look any different than one of his university professors blathering on about magical theory was yet another, but neither replaced hearing an authority like Merlin confirm everything they'd been told. He stared at the security reports on his laptop, idly wondering if the thefts had been perpetrated by magic users, if the NWO was involved, and if they were, what were they doing with weapons when they had magic? He answered his own question with a random thought, because he remembered Merlin's collapse after using large amounts of magic without preparation, and how the Directory sorcerer needed time to recoup their strength after even minor spells._

_Arthur's silence must have lasted too long for Merlin's liking, because he felt a weight dip on the mattress, and his laptop slapped shut, only to be replaced by Merlin straddling his hips, wearing nothing but a raised brow. "You do know you woke me up from a sound sleep? That there's penalties for that?"_

Arthur abruptly sat up straight in his chair and looked at his father. Thinking about a naked Merlin in his lap extracting his due recompense for being awakened in the middle of the night when the world wasn't falling around their ears was not something he wanted to do while in Uther's company. But the conversation that had first preceded, then had followed a sweaty, fully satisfying round of sex had stuck in Arthur's mind for no other reason beyond being unable to forget the completely sated and sleepy look on Merlin's face when they finally drifted off that night.

There were possibly one or two things that Arthur suspected might actually work in tracking the robberies, but he didn't feel comfortable mentioning them to Uther. He knew how much Uther had been read into Arthur's mission, and he knew that it didn't involve a full revelation about the NWO. Mentioning magic to his father was likely tantamount to treason, if it didn't have Uther signing paperwork to get Arthur committed to a psychiatric ward first.

Idly, Arthur wondered if he could ask Merlin to cast some sort of magical tracers on the next big shipment, on the off-chance that it might get hijacked.

Uther's tapping fingers were now tapping at the surface of the table hard enough to go through the wood. There was a weighty and evaluative look in his eyes, and finally, he said, "I have a meeting. Walk me out."

"Yes, sir," Arthur said, and he couldn't help but think this entire meeting with his father, which had been Uther's idea, had gone sideways of strange. He asked after Morgana, the internal investigation, the missing weapons -- and suddenly dropped the matter entirely. He stood up and straightened up the room by matter of rote while Uther unsecured the meeting room and hid the controls behind the secret panel once more.

Gwaine was sitting in the front lobby of the reception area, raising a brow with a meaningful glance at his watch and a question in his eyes. Arthur offered him a _I don't know_ shake of his head and half-listened as the Colonel had the receptionist call downstairs for his driver to bring the car around. They went to Uther's office, where he gathered his briefcase and a few file folders while Arthur lingered in the room, hands in his pockets. His fingers curled around his phone and he was trying very hard not to think that Merlin had missed his half-hour text.

"We'll have dinner one night. Perhaps Sunday," Uther said abruptly.

"Sunday?" Arthur tried to come up with a suitable excuse, but his mind was blank with worry for Merlin.

"Yes. A family dinner. Morgana and Leon will be there." Uther closed his briefcase with a click. "I'll make certain of it."

"Yes, sir," Arthur said, resigned. There was no point in arguing when Uther wanted one of his "family dinners". Instead, Arthur reshuffled his plans, wondering how he would explain this to Merlin.

"Bring Merlin," Uther said. Arthur glanced up, startled, and there must have been something in his expression because Uther added, "My understanding is that you will be bringing him anyway. It may as well be with my blessing."

"Is it?" Arthur found himself asking, his mouth a little dry. His father had known that Arthur was gay since he walked in on Arthur saying as much to Olaf when Olaf was trying to murder him while under the mistaken impression that Arthur was despoiling his daughter, Vivian, but he had never invited any of Arthur's boyfriends over for a family dinner before. In some instances -- when he was dating Gwaine, for one -- Arthur had been expressly _forbidden_ from bringing them to the family dinners.

"Certainly," Uther said. " _Someone_ has to approach him with an offer of employment, as you seem to be unable to do so."

Arthur flushed. He remembered Uther's request -- really, it had been more of an order -- following the War Games to do everything in his power to ensure Merlin became a Pendragon employee. Arthur hadn't even begun to broach the subject with Merlin -- not once. He wasn't certain why. With everyone else, it was as simple as "What are you doing after our tours are up", and he was able to offer positions for everyone except Lance, who was determined to go back to school to become a doctor. The logistics for their future positions would be sorted once they were finished with the current mission, but Merlin? He'd avoided the subject entirely.

"I'll discuss it with him," Arthur said. 

"Good. I would prefer that the company remain in family hands," Uther said. "It is a given that Leon will be joining us one day. And of course, your partner."

Arthur nodded. He hadn't missed how Uther's voice had thickened with emotion, and wondered if his father was finally coming to terms with Arthur's preference. But he also hadn't missed how Uther's eyes drifted to the side, hiding something.

Arthur took an uncertain breath. "Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? A little family gathering at dinner some night in the near future?"

"There is one other matter," Uther said. He strode purposefully from his desk to the door to his office and beyond. "Come with me."

Gwaine stepped into the elevator with them, flashing a smile to Uther that Uther responded with a long-suffering roll of his eyes. The floor numbers blinked in descending order and they were halfway down the building before Arthur thought to ask, "Where's your bodyguard?"

"I'll meet him at the car."

"If Morgana --" Arthur didn't finish the thought; the elevator stopped at another floor, and a young woman started to step inside before freezing where she stood, apparently recognizing not only the owner of the company, but also the owner's son. The woman made a small shrieking sound that erupted in a fumble of file folders and papers that scattered on the floor just as the elevator doors slid shut. It wasn't the first time that Arthur had received that reaction. "If Morgana was targeted, then it stands to reason that you are at risk as well. You should --"

The Colonel raised a hand. "Don't tell me what I should and shouldn't do, Arthur. I am well capable of protecting myself."

"As is Morgana," Arthur said, turning to face Uther. "You shouldn't be taking unnecessary risks."

"I am hardly taking unnecessary risks in my own building," Uther said with a scoff. He brushed past Arthur in a gesture that could hardly be described as graceful, their shoulders crashing together roughly, and stepped out of the elevator. Arthur glanced at Gwaine before following his father out.

"Texted Perce on the way down. He's out in the square," Gwaine murmured quietly. Arthur gave him a small nod.

No one stopped Uther at security -- no one would risk their jobs by delaying the company's owner from his appointments. Instead, Uther nodded at the man behind the black marble desk, who raised a hand in acknowledgement before picking up a pen to presumably sign him out. Arthur didn't bother making eye contact, fairly certain that the security guard knew who he was and was noting his departure in the same squiggly handwriting that he did Uther's.

The glass doors flashed open; Arthur was on Uther's heels all the way out to the square, walking past the broad plaza where smokers lingered around the streaming fountain and down the extended steps to the sidewalk and the road, where the sleek black Lincoln was waiting, a tall man that Arthur didn't recognize standing by the rear passenger door.

Arthur had a feeling that the man was more of a chauffeur than a bodyguard. "Father. Let me call some of my men to accompany you --"

"Alex is perfectly capable of watching over me," Uther said, which was an euphemism for _driving me around, staying out of my way, and keeping his damn mouth shut_ if Arthur had ever heard one. Uther was fretting over Morgana's safety -- which, to be fair, was understandable, since Arthur was doing the same -- but he was looking down his nose at the mere possibility that anyone would dare interfere with him and his affairs.

"Tell me that he's armed," Arthur said.

"I am sure he is," Uther answered, which meant, _I don't know and I don't care_.

"Are you?" Arthur asked.

It seemed that Uther walked faster, but the sidelong glance Arthur received fell squarely between _of course I am, who do you think you're talking to_ and _of course not, I'll set off every metal detector, I don't particularly desire attracting attention to myself_.

"Do you want a gun?" Arthur asked, and he was about to wave Gwaine over, because he knew Gwaine was a walking armoury and would have guns to spare.

"No," Uther said sharply, and Arthur pressed his lips together until they went numb. He shared a glance with Gwaine, who lingered nearby, surreptitiously studying all the sightlines from nearby buildings into the open space. Perceval caught up to them with long strides, speaking quietly with Gwaine before approaching Arthur and Uther, but stopping short of invading the critical bubble of personal space that Uther cultivated wherever he went -- a bubble that was at least five to ten metres in diameter.

Uther came to a halt on the top step and turned to look at Arthur, checking his watch once again, as if he were calculating distances and the delay traffic at this time of day would cause, all to have a strategic grand entrance at his meeting point. Uther, after all, didn't _go_ to other people for meetings; those other people came to him. Timing his arrival, making people wait, having a dramatic bluster into the meeting room of whatever building with whomever he was colluding with that day, that was very much Uther, wrangling for dominance and control.

Arthur stopped next to him, hand in his pocket, and waited. He didn't say a word while Uther decided that he was well and completely in charge of the conversation. It was easier to let him think that, or he would never get to the point.

Uther's eyes darted along the horizon, gauging distance between those hovering around the fountain and blowing blue fag smoke into the air in what was obviously their second and third cigarette and well past their established break time quota. He scanned for familiar faces, for people moving around, and, satisfied, he gave Arthur a darting glance that was contemplative and conniving.

"We are not the only ones with profit margins affected by the thefts," Uther began without preamble, but then again, the preamble had all occurred up on the top floors of the Pendragon building, in a room that had been electronically warded against eavesdroppers. It struck Arthur as odd that Uther would speak more on the matter now, when they were in the open.

"I'm aware of that, sir," Arthur said. Of course Uther would already know about it. It was now a matter of where he was going with this piece of information.

"Cenred King has been sniffing around our warehouses and accosting our people," Uther began. "He's been asking questions."

Idly, Arthur wondered if that was the reason behind the industry-wide email that had been broadcast that morning, reminding staff of their non-disclosure agreements, the limitations imposed on what they could talk about, and who to direct inquiries to if someone asked questions about Pendragon Consulting. It had been couched in stern legalese, but there had been hints of Uther's terseness throughout.

"Questions. About what?" Arthur asked.

"Production. Shipment. Financials. R&D." Arthur waited for him to continue. Uther's eyebrows raised into sharp peaks, and he lowered his chin the way a bull bowed down its head before the charge. "Nothing that he hasn't tried to find out in previous attempts. His tactics and approach did not change until recently. The questions have been specific to the facility in France. The laboratory."

There were three principal locations for the R&D departments -- electronics and nanotechnology, chemical biotechnology, and ammunitions -- all of which were located at undisclosed addresses to preserve against industrial espionage, theft, and catastrophe. While the designs and applications for electronics and nanotechnology had been moved to London five years ago, the munitions branch redirected to the north near the border to Wales, the chemical and biotechnology warfare laboratory operated out of an unmarked building in the French countryside.

As far as Arthur knew -- and he didn't pay much attention to the reports out of that division because the science was over his head -- the lab was the primary source of new metal blends, harder-than-steel plastics, even the tiny nanofibres that were being used to manufacture the next generation of body armour. He'd skimmed through the reports and was aware of the major projects underway, including a new venture into stealth technology using biological camouflage. All of those projects were confidential. Not even their multiple government contacts, who had been hinting for years that they would love to see progress in the stealth field, were aware that Pendragon Consulting had been working on the technology for some time.

He lowered his head to indicate that he understood Uther's concern, and asked, "Anything specific?"

"No," Uther said.

"What is this about, then?"

"Taking advantage of an opportunity," Uther said, making a small, inviting gesture. Although Arthur knew that this would only assist anyone eavesdropping on them electronically, he took a few steps closer. "Cenred has been requesting meetings with me. I've been putting him off. His secretary has been annoyingly persistent, however, and I have instructed Grace to suggest that, perhaps, Cenred would have better luck arranging a meeting with you."

Arthur raised a brow. Grace was Uther's long-time personal assistant; she was as impenetrable as a bank vault. "He's not going to buy it. Grace isn't that sloppy. She wouldn't let the devil through your office door without an appointment."

Someone had even drawn a cartoon to commemorate the joke, and Grace had it framed and hung behind her desk for everyone to see: the devil sitting petulantly in a guest chair, legs crossed at the ankles, forked trident in his hand while he waited for Uther's next opening in his calendar.

"He will, when Grace goes on her coffee break and instructs the receptionist to misunderstand who Cenred's people are asking for, and redirects the call to your office."

"Father --" Arthur didn't have the words for how much of a brilliantly _bad_ idea it was to meet King. He knew what King would say and do -- he could have a smooth tongue or a barbed tongue or he would bypass pretty speeches and vile banter in favour of a gun and a bullet.

Uther's voice dipped a few degrees below zero. "You have no idea what an inconvenience and an embarrassment this _mission_ of yours is doing to me, to the company. You will take advantage of your current cover to mislead Cenred into thinking that you are perfectly willing to sell me and the company out for the right price, and you are going to find out what it is that he is up to."

The words were out of Arthur's mouth before he could stop them. "You're taking the piss."

"Arthur," Uther said, his voice a biting snarl. "You _will_ do this."

Arthur clenched his jaw. His nostrils flared, his shoulders tensed. His hands closed into firsts -- this was a complication that he didn't need right now. He did not need to be playing _more_ games when he had far more important things to deal with. Like Merlin following Will into Freya's web. Like Morgana's kidnapping. The missing Morgause. His upcoming meeting with the NWO.

The implications of Uther's request, or rather, his _order_ , because Uther didn't merely _ask_ for things, weighed him down. 

Instead of agreeing, Arthur said, "I'll do what I can. My mission takes precedence."

"And your responsibility to your family? The company I built? The company that I'll hand to you when I retire? You'll do more than that." Uther favoured Arthur with a heavy look before turning and walking down the steps leading to his car. Alex closed the rear passenger door behind Uther, climbed in the driver's seat, and drove off.

Arthur watched the car merge into traffic at the end of the road and disappear.

" _And your responsibility to your family_ ," Arthur mocked under his breath. There were times he really hated his father.

Gwaine's hand on his shoulder startled him. "Come on. The area's too open. If I were a sniper, I'd be rubbing my hands in glee right now, because you're standing in a _prime_ target spot."

"You are a sniper, Gwaine," Arthur said, but he let Gwaine lead him back into the building, Perceval on their heels.

  
**ooOOoo**   


"Are you ever going to talk to me again?" Will asked, nudging Merlin's knee with his leg.

"No," Merlin said. He didn't look up.

For the last few hours, they'd been wandering aimlessly through London -- though not as aimlessly as it appeared. Merlin followed Will, who claimed left and right that he had a pre-planned route, but it wasn't until an hour had passed and Merlin was getting cold from not wearing enough layers that he figured out that there was no plan. Will was killing time until Freya called him.

It was at that point that Merlin pulled rank and dragged Will through a spate of stores and coffee shops, making Will buy him an elaborate, overpriced coffee with a giant muffin fresh from the baker's oven, a bag of crisps that Will appropriated and demolished, and a breakfast take-away from a crummy McDonald's tucked in a narrow slot between a Subway's and a consignment store that Merlin handed off to a couple of kids on the street who looked as if they hadn't eaten anything that wasn't out of a restaurant's rubbish bin for weeks.

Will had protested, but Merlin had given him a pointed glare and he'd shut up. The Directory was footing the bill anyway, and Merlin was feeling vengeful. A few quid's worth of greasy takeaway was hardly going to break the Directory's bank, but it made him feet better, somehow.

Eventually, Will had checked his watch and made a grand announcement that they needed to stay on the move, because _surely_ Kay wasn't still knocked out by now and the team was probably doing a massive manhunt for Merlin, and they moved the _hurry up and wait_ aspect of legging-it to the Underground.

They'd boarded during one of those rare times of days when there was a strange, synched lull in transit usage throughout London, because the car they were in was empty and had been empty for the last ten minutes and nearly as many stops. Will had glared at him suspiciously at first, convinced that he had something to do with it.

Merlin didn't have anything to do with it this time.

He'd actually forgotten about that trick. The first time he'd used it, they'd been fifteen and on a day trip to London to the British Museum organized by a well-meaning but young and brand-new teacher who had no clue about the world of pain she had been about to enter by taking twenty teenagers into London. She'd lost half of the group within minutes of their arrival at the station, and by the time Merlin had gotten the hang of making the Underground go faster (it helped if no one was around to watch him perform magic) to get them to the British Museum, it was nearly sundown, and their teacher had a spectacular breakdown when she had realized that while she'd gotten the missing half of the group back together, the other half had snuck off.

As far as Merlin knew, there were still two of their former classmates missing. Speculation had ranged from _got mugged for everything they were worth and were left beaten and bleeding in some alley somewhere_ to _kidnapped by foreigners and sold as slaves or prostitutes_ to _snatched by aliens for probing experiments_. The last bit was always accompanied with elbow pokes and lecherous winks.

They had a substitute teacher for the rest of that term. Their original teacher never came back to teaching. There had been many, many attempts by the rest of the class to repeat the feat, but the substitute teacher had been from the Uncle Gaius School of Eyebrows, and had quelled any sort of rebellion very quickly.

Merlin tried not to chuckle at the memory. His face was hurting.

"C'mon, you know you want to --" Will said, nudging Merlin's leg some more.

"Will?"

"Yeah?"

"You're a fucking pillock," Merlin said. He was sitting, elbows on his knees, head down, his hands clasped together as if in prayer. Despite all the room that they had for themselves in the empty car, Will was seated next to him, splayed out as he had been on the couch in the flat, claiming as much territory as he could for himself. His duffel bag was between his legs.

"What did I do?"

"What didn't you do?" Merlin retorted, shooting him a sidelong glare. Merlin straightened and waved around with his hand. "For the fucking billionth time. You shouldn't be here."

Will's head thunked against the Plexiglas windows and he huffed a heavy, annoyed sigh. He rolled his hand in the air in a _all right, let's have it_ again _, but I sure hope that you'll tire of all this bitching and moaning soon_ gesture. 

Merlin knew he was repeating himself. He also knew that lecturing Will was about as effective as asking that brick wall at their flat back in uni to kindly move two inches to the left so that there would be more room for the oversized furniture that they'd _carefully measured out_ , and yet still didn't fit. "You're a pillock," Merlin repeated instead. There was less heat in his voice this time around.

"If you ask me, mate, your anger's misdirected," Will said, glancing around with the exaggerated care of someone making sure that they wouldn't be overheard, which was ridiculous considering that there wasn't anyone else in the car. "You should be pissed at Arthur. He's the one that smacked you one."

"And whose fault is that?" Merlin snapped. He inhaled deeply and reminded himself that he was supposed to be playing a role, and he might as well immerse himself in it now. "Wouldn't have happened if you'd just called me to find out for yourself what were going on. Why the fuck would you listen to Freya, anyway? What did she tell you, that my boyfriend's hitting me? I mean, really, look who it's coming from --"

"Exactly," Will said. "If anyone would know, she would, yeah?"

"She should mind her own bloody business, that's what she should know," Merlin snapped. He sat back as the train slowed down for the next stop. He wasn't in the mood for company -- the few passengers who had disembarked several stops ago had stared at Merlin and Will as if expecting them to attack them, and had clutched their briefcases and purses against their chests protectively. He used a bit of magic to keep the doors from opening. A few people stopped short of walking into the doors, cursed loudly enough to be heard, and hurried to the nearest car.

"You did it this time," Will remarked.

"Fuck off. I'm getting tired of people looking at us," Merlin said. Arthur's slap hadn't been hard enough to dislocate his jaw, but it had been hard enough that it must be nicely bruised now, if the way his face ached whenever Merlin talked was any indication. The split and swollen lip didn't help, and neither did the greying remnants of the black eye Bohrs had given him. Will didn't look better. His hair was ruffled, his jacket torn in places, and the side of his face had started swelling up a while ago, greening up along the line of his temple. Merlin thought that he could see the outline of Kay's knuckles just under Will's cheekbone.

"Aw, is little widdle Merlin embarrassed that he's in an abusive relationship?" Will said.

"Screw you, and he's not," Merlin said. He worked his jaw. The worst of it wasn't the bruise. It had been seeing Arthur afterward. He'd had looked _terrible_.

"So who hit you the first time?"

"Doesn't matter, yeah? What's important is that Bryn and Freya think they know what's going on. I told Freya I walked into a door," Merlin said.

Will shrugged. "That's not completely unbelievable."

"See? Exactly what I was thinking at the time, but apparently Freya thinks I give off helpless puppy vibes," Merlin said, crossing his arms.

"You do."

"Bollocks," Merlin said. He slumped a little in his seat, elbowing Will out of the way so that he had more room. "Move over. I were here first."

"No, I were," Will said, shoving back.

They rode in silence for a while, stopping at the next station, and this time, Merlin let the doors yawn open. A couple of girls in school uniform and very obviously skipping classes stepped in, their backpacks nearly getting caught in the closing doors. They giggled to themselves, looked around, saw Will and Merlin, and giggled some more, but they didn't budge from their standing position in front of the doors, ready to barrel out. They did exactly that at the next stop, but no one stepped in at that station.

"How much longer do we have to sit here? My arse's getting sore --"

Will made a scandalized sound. "I really don't want to hear about your arse or any variation thereof."

"Prude."

"Slag."

Merlin paused, and glanced sidelong. "Why can't we talk about my arse? I had to listen to you moan after you got back from your trip --"

"That were the once, and _never, ever again_ ," Will said.

"Are you sure? Because I know some good kink clubs up in Wales --"

"How do you know about the kink clubs?"

"-- and I have it on good authority that there's a Mistress there who'd be more than happy to replicate your Amsterdam session --"

"I want to know how you know the kink clubs," Will repeated.

"-- she'll include a right good buggering with the police billy --"

"Get back to kink clubs. Which ones? Where? Jesus, Merls, we're mates, if you're keeping important information from me --" 

"I bloody well knew it, you _loved_ Amsterdam, no matter what you say --" Merlin snickered.

"No, I'm serious, I want to know, I want a detailed list --"

"I can always give you some tips, so that it doesn't hurt as much next time. Unless that's part of the appeal for you --"

"Will you shut it before I shut it for you, and, no, wait, here, I have a pencil somewhere, start writing them down --"

Will's phone rang, loud and shrill over the rumble of the train. Merlin stopped laughing, Will stopped talking, and they looked at each other meaningfully before Will scrambled through his jacket pockets for his phone. He showed Merlin the call display before answering.

"Freya -- No, I didn't miss my train. See, there was a little bit of a complication -- no, no, I'm here, just. Freya. Freya. Shut up a second, I'm trying to talk here --" Will glanced at Merlin and rolled his eyes. He covered the mouthpiece. "I really don't remember her being this mouthy."

Merlin shrugged. It was some time before Will resumed paying attention to the phone call.

"Here's what happened," Will said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I were pissed, all right? I couldn't wait. Yeah, I know you told me to wait for you, that we'll talk first, but it's _Merlin_ , I had to see for myself he weren't dead in a ditch or something. I find out Merls' address and knock on the door and I'm let in and there's --"

A muscle jumped in Will's jaw, and Merlin smirked. "What? No. I were _not_ going to shoot someone on your say so --"

A middle-aged man had the misfortune to walk onto their car at right that moment, then walked right out again when he overheard Will. Will shot Merlin a look and waved his hand in the direction of the doors in a gesture that could only mean _do you mind? I'm trying to have a private conversation_.

"Anyway, there's Pendragon, business suit posh and there's Merlin, and he looks all right to me, except maybe there's a bit of yellow around his eye -- Yes, Freya. Yes, you told me. I know, Freya, it's been a few days, bruises _heal_ , yes, I know, I _know_ , I've gotten them myself --"

Will put a hand on his forehead as if to ease an ache and mouthed _Okay maybe this was a bad idea_ while Merlin tried very hard not to smirk.

"But I didn't think anything happened, because, you remember our Merlin? Trips over a bloody blade of grass? Turns around and misses the corridor, walks into the brick wall instead? He hasn't changed. No, he hasn't. He never will -- what? No, if he says he tripped down a flight of stairs I'm inclined to believe him, but -- And, yes, I know -- Oi. Wait. Who's telling the story here. That's right. Me. Do something else with your gob for a minute and _bloody well let me talk, woman_ ," Will said.

There was a moment of silence, and Merlin risked a sidelong look, but it seemed that the coast was clear, because Will was half-rolling his eyes again and shaking his head and mouthing, _too much work and no payoff_ , because he really did carry his brain around in his pants. 

"Orright. It's like this. Pendragon takes Merlin upstairs, Pendragon leaves the house, says make yourself at home, Merlin doesn't come down until he's left, and even then it's a while, and when he does, he's got a fat lip and a bruise on his cheek --" Will pulled the phone from his ear, his eyes crossed from the pain of Freya's shriek, and he covered his ear. He gave it a few seconds before checking Freya's volume, waited some more, and brought his phone to his other ear. "Yeah, fine, enough with the _I told you so_ and the _I were right weren't I_ , because you're really not pretty when you gloat. Anyway, I have Merlin with me, we've dumped his bodyguard, and --"

The train slowed down again, and Merlin made sure the doors didn't open. The crowds were thickening; pretty soon someone would start banging on the doors and have someone investigate why there were two people in a car while the others were packed like sardines.

"Yeah, you heard me right, I have Merlin with me. He's being stroppy, keeps saying that he has to get back, that Arthur will be peeved, and, you know, I could use some backup here, because he keeps trying to get away from _me_ , like I'm the bad guy here. We're on the Underground on number fuck-if-I-know-what train going fuck-if-I-know-where, and -- What? No, you bloody woman, don't put me on hold --"

Will sighed heavily and glanced at Merlin. "She put me on hold."

"Of course she did. She has to check with Bryn."

Will shrugged. After a moment, he bobbed his head from side to side. "Unbelievable. She's got elevator music on her phone."

Merlin chuckled.

"Yes, I'm still here," Will said wearily, sitting forward, elbows on his knees, rubbing his eyes. "No, Merlin's right next to me, but if he doesn't bloody stop wriggling around and trying to run off -- you know, right now, I totally understand why Pendragon would hit him a good one because if he doesn't quit it, I swear I will hit him -- What? No, I'm fucking kidding, you -- Yes, I'm listening. Yeah, we'll get off at the next stop and I'll tell you where we are and we'll sit on our arses in the cold --"

Will stared at his phone in consternation and finished, "-- while we wait for you to show up. She hung up on me."

"Nah, you just lost the signal," Merlin said.

"Right. I'll call her back at the next station." Will snapped his phone shut and shoved it in his coat pocket, picking up his duffel bag as the train slowed down. "Let's get off here."

They walked out onto the platform, Will shouldering his duffel bag and smacking a fair few people in the head with it, probably on purpose, and they waited for the area to clear before he said anything. "So how did I do?"

Merlin looked him up and down, and grudgingly said, "Not bad."

Will preened, strutting around in a small circle until Merlin couldn't take it anymore.

"Oh, gods. Stop being a bloody peacock and call Freya."

"Right." Will dropped his bag, flicked through the contacts list on his phone, and waited for the call to ring through. "Freya!"

His expression fell, his shoulders slumped, and he stared heavenward while he waited for Freya to stop talking long enough for him to get a word in edgewise. 

"-- I'm trying to tell you, we went through some tunnel or high power wires or some freaky shite like that, I didn't hang up on you, I lost connection. Do you -- Freya. Freya. Do you want to know where we are or not? Because the longer I try to talk to you the more Merlin -- _Merlin! Get back here!_ \--"

Merlin gave Will a dark look, because he was two feet away, and if Will had any talents at all besides always hitting his target the way Gwaine always hit his targets, it was his lung capacity and a bull elephant's bellow that rivalled his Mum's, audible clear across the army base _in a different country_. He half-listened while Will gave Freya their location, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets and trying not to shiver from the cold blast of wind that just blustered through.

Will glanced at him, and very forcefully said, "Freya, there's a coffee shop right across the way. I'm taking Merlin there. He might do better with some sugar in him, plus, it's kind of my fault but I pulled him out without a coat -- Yes, I promise. We'll be right there, waiting for you."

He hung up with a head-shake. "Says she's be here in about an hour if the traffic holds. Christ's bollocks, Merls. Tell me that she doesn't always talk this much."

"Not when Bryn's around," Merlin said, leading the way across the street to the coffee shop. He wasn't sure he wanted a caffeine high right now, never mind a sugar rush that would only crash hard later, but he really wanted to get warm. 

They settled at a table with two cups of fresh-brewed tea that Merlin used to warm his hands until Will snatched his mug out of Merlin's grasp. "Merls?"

"Yeah?"

"Think that Kay's one to hold grudges?" Will asked.

"It depends, I guess," Merlin said, shrugging a shoulder. "Why?"

"Well, I read his file, you know. I knew he was a toff, but I didn't realize _how_ toff. I'm pretty sure he were pulling his punches --"

"He probably was," Merlin said, sipping the black tea before it cooled too much.

"-- and, you know, I kind of like my face the way it is --"

"I don't know," Merlin said, wriggling a finger over his own nose. "Could probably do with a job on that duck's bill you've got."

"-- would like it if he didn't knock me out the next time I saw him --"

"Oh, just man up and say you're sorry," Merlin said, shaking his head. "Besides, if he were pulling his punches, that probably means he weren't trying to hurt you, just knock you around a bit."

"That's the part I'm worried about, Merls. If you call _that_ just a bit of knocking 'round, then what's he like when he's going for the kill?"

Merlin scratched his chin with his thumb thoughtfully. " **Ong Bak**."

" **Ip Man** , maybe?" Will asked, sounding concerned.

Merlin shrugged. "Maybe more like **Kung Fu Hustle**. Except I'm not sure he owns a suit."

Will nearly snorted hot tea through his nose. He coughed and wiped himself with the cheap napkins on the counter. "Or maybe **Shaolin Soccer**?"

Merlin grinned. "Yeah, possible. He's pretty good at footie."

They shared a soft chuckle before the conversation drifted to other random things, comfortable and familiar the way conversations with Will tended to be. Merlin pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was 1300, and time to text Arthur.

_Wtng 4 Frya. Dont knw when Ill txt nxt. Dont wrry._

Thinking about Freya made Merlin glance up at Will, and there was a tight, worried curl in his belly. 

"Will?"

"Yeah?"

"Did Freya tell you anything about magic?"

"No, I'm supposed to play dumb on that," Will said. "That shouldn't be too hard. The only person I've seen use it is you, to be honest, and from what the Smith bloke told me about it, everyone uses it different. That were fun, that, pretending I didn't already know."

"Yeah," Merlin said, his voice a little hollow. He leaned his elbows on the cheap acrylic table and said, "Yeah. There's that. Plus, them, they use magic like. I don't know. Bryn's got booths at his clubs warded for soundproofing, and I think he uses it too. I'm not sure, I just haven't seen him --"

"And Freya?" Merlin's grimace must have showed in his expression, because Will ducked his head down and leaned in closer. "Merls? What about Freya?"

Merlin drank the cold dregs of his tea and glanced at the harried woman behind the counter, wondering if facing her churlish snap was worth another cup. He decided not, and shook his head, taking a deep breath. "I promised Freya I would never tell."

"Yeah?" When Merlin didn't answer, Will said again, "Yeah? Yeah? You can't just dangle that in front of my nose and then yank it away without telling me anything --"

"I can't, Will. I made a promise." Merlin chewed his lower lip absentmindedly, wincing when his tooth snagged the cut. He grabbed for a napkin when he tasted blood, and over the crumpled off-white sorry excuse of a napkin that wasn't even fit for use as a bog roll, saw Will's hurt and betrayed expression. His shoulders slumped. "But. Look. Remember back when we were kids?"

"Sure," Will said.

"And there were all those bodies turning up by Old Man Simmons' farm?"

"Not just around there, if I remember," Will said, his eyebrows pinching with the effort of considering how to connect the dots between Freya and the bodies. "Used to say it were boars and wild dogs, didn't they? The one goring the punkers going out after nightfall, the other nibbling up the remnants? Had animal control out there for a while, and even issued extra hunting licenses?"

"Yeah, that," Merlin said. "Remember what we used to say it were like? You know. Monsters?"

Will's eyes went big, round, and wide in an instant. "You're having me on. She's a werewolf!"

"Keep it down!" Merlin's eyes drifted to the counter and to the other customers, but no one seemed to be paying attention to them.

"She is, isn't she?" Will's expression went from the big, excited grin at the possibility of seeing a werewolf up close and personal, to terrified and apprehensive because, if all went well, he'd be staying with Bryn and Freya until they set him up somewhere, and he'd be _staying with a werewolf_. "Shite!"

"Calm down."

"Shite! Bloody fucking shite! You tell me this _now_?"

"Calm down!" Merlin reached over the table and knocked Will on the side of the head with a solid blow. Will caught himself before toppling over onto the floor. "You don't know this, and you never heard it from me even if you did, yeah?"

"What the hell are you telling me for, then? Now I'm thinking of doing a runner before she gets here!"

"I'm _warning_ you to be careful. I meant it when I said you need to stop being a stupid pillock and _be careful_ for once."

"Shite!" Will glanced around, looked out the window, and checked his watch. "Shite!"

"Goddamn it, Will. Pull yourself together." Merlin rubbed his face and wished he'd kept his gob shut, but he couldn't bear thinking of Will walking into Freya's house and not knowing what he was in for.

Will leaned in after a shaky two-gulp finish of his cold tea. "How... How do you know she is? How is it the Di -- that Smithy doesn't know --"

"I found her," Merlin said, his voice low, the memory making him sad. "Bloody and crying and terrifying. We were kids, Will. She was a kid, didn't know what were going on."

"Is she... Is she the sort of -- like we see on TV?"

Merlin shook his head. "No. I don't know. She didn't even know what made her turn back then. It's nothing like the full moon or that sort. Maybe she knows now, but it's not like we chat about that, you know. I used to try to get her to meditate, to control it, but --"

"Wait. You tried to teach her to control it? Didn't you say she doesn't know about you?"

"She doesn't," Merlin said, shaking his head. "I only told her I were learning it from Uncle Gaius. That's all. Anyway, will you shut up and listen? The thing is, that first time I went to see her and Bryn, over at that club of theirs? The Lockdown? Well, something weird went on there that night and it involved Freya and, I don't know. Just. Watch yourself, yeah?"

Will was silent for nearly a full minute before he finally nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. "Yeah. Don't worry. I have it under control."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," Will sand, glancing out the window. He gave Merlin a sharp nod. "Put your game face on. Here comes Furry -- I mean, Freya."

Merlin kicked him under the table.

"Ouch! I didn't deserve that!"

"Did too," Merlin said. "That was cruel. It's not like she can help it."

"Give me your phone. Quick. Let's make it look like I've been keeping you from calling reinforcements," Will said, and Merlin -- after a quick glance to ensure the encryption lock was activated -- slid it across the surface of the table. Will caught it and slid it into his coat pocket -- Merlin noted where it went in case he needed to retrieve it in a hurry -- just as Freya walked in.

In the reflective surface behind Will, Merlin watched Freya scan the shop. She was wearing a pale lavender dress that might have some sort of pattern to it, lashed at the waist with a ribbon, but the colour of it was washed out by the heavier tones of the oversized trench coat that was probably Bryn's. Merlin wouldn't put it past Bryn to insist Freya wear pretty clothes, but to force her to hide herself when she was out in public without him. It went with the behaviour he'd observed in her so far.

He continued to watch, but she came in alone.

Will finally raised his hand, and Freya came over, her pleased expression at seeing them marred by the severe line of concern between her brows. Merlin followed Will's glance and looked over his shoulder, letting his face fall from appalled but amused at the _Furry_ remark that Will had made to angry at seeing Freya.

He avoided her hug by standing up abruptly in a clatter and squeak of chairs, brushing past her to head toward the loo.

She grabbed him, her hands warm against his cold skin, and yanked him back with surprising force. "Where are you going?"

Merlin affected a stricken expression, his body bowing fearfully, but there was no masking the sharp tone of his voice when he clasped his hands and said, "Oh, _may I_ please go to the loo? Because I'm _not sure_ if I can take care of myself. You _might want_ to hold my dick for me."

He yanked himself free, feeling awful for the startled, pained look on Freya's face, hunching his shoulders while he stared at the floor, and walked away. He glanced out the shop window, taking note of the car Freya came in, repeating the license plate to himself.

"See what I told you? Stroppy," Will said.

"Is he going to --"

"Already checked. There's no way out that way," Will said.

Merlin wove around tables and chairs and servers before reaching the corridor, glancing at both the shop entrance and the table where he'd left Will and Freya. Two patrons left but no one new came in. Freya sat at the edge of her seat, her body angled toward the corridor to the washrooms, biting her fingernails with worry, but Will was keeping her rooted where she was.

Merlin went to the pay phone. He punched in a sequence of very illegal numbers from memory, getting a dial tone without entering his phone card number or dropping a few coins into the slot, and called Kay's cell phone.

"This better be you, Merlin," Kay answered, short, curt, and grumpy.

"Will says he's sorry," Merlin said quickly.

"He'd better be," Kay said, but his tone lightened. "You're in the coffee shop, yeah?"

"Oh, thank gods. You're here," Merlin said, sighing in relief. Will had them on the go so much that Merlin didn't have much of a chance to text anyone but Arthur, and Arthur was the only one who had tried to contact him. He didn't want to let Will know more than what was necessary, and knowing that Kay was nearby was one of those things. "Did you get my location from Arthur?"

"No, I've been on your tail since the house," Kay said. "Your mate punches hard, but he doesn't punch _that_ hard. He's probably in worse shape than I am. Did I see Freya walk in?"

"Yeah."

"And you're calling me from a pay phone because Will's got your cell?"

"Yeah," Merlin said. He stretched out the handset's cord as much as he could to see if anyone was coming who shouldn't. Will was making big arm gestures and keeping Freya's eyes on him -- even though she laughed at whatever Will was telling her, she didn't look as if she were giving him her full attention. "Kay, do you need me to stall?"

"No. Whenever you're ready. Merlin, when we get back, we're going to talk about magical tracers, because, for fuck's sake, do you know what a bloody pain in the arse it is, trying to follow someone in the Underground?"

"Yeah, I'll get right on that." Merlin hung up and went to the bathroom, where he poked at his fat lip -- which really wasn't that bad, except for the cut at the corner of his mouth right where he always chewed his lip when he was thinking, and at his face. There was a bit of yellow to match the fading black eye, but nothing serious.

He wandered around in a circle, leaned against the sink, and waited, wondering how long it would be before Freya sent Will after him. That was when he spotted the small frosted window. He went into the sole private stall, which was missing the door for some reason, climbed on top of the toilet and after a few fruitless tugs -- someone had _painted_ the damn thing shut -- used his magic to crack it open.

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. He heard the door squeak open and glanced over his shoulder to see Will come in, Freya right behind him. Merlin scrambled for the window, wriggled his way up, and _nearly_ got his shoulders through when Will yanked him out.

They both fell to the dirty tiled floor in a heap. Merlin flailed uselessly, windmilling his arms and kicking out his legs in the hopes of getting free, but Will ducked and dodged the blows easily.

"Jesus, Merls. We're trying to _help_ you here. Stop it. _Stop it!_ " Will grabbed him and held him tightly for several long seconds before he sagged, pretending to give up. When Will let him go, Merlin shoved him away.

"Get off of me."

"Well, if you're going to be like that," Will said, giving Freya a _now do you see what I've had to put up with_ look. "Come on. Freya's going to take us to her place. It'll be nice and warm and safe. All right?"

"I hate you," Merlin said. Will grabbed his wrist; Merlin wrenched it away, but he followed Freya and Will out without more protests, his shoulders up to his ears, hands shoved tightly in his pockets. He felt the crush of quids that Arthur had shoved in his pockets, but felt bereft without his cell phone.

Freya got in the front passenger seat; Will shoved him into the rear, catching him before he could scramble out the other side. Merlin sank down in his seat, crossed his arms, and didn't answer anyone except in meaningless grunts. The only time he glanced up was to see who was driving. It was a nondescript man, the sort blessed with average height, average weight, and average looks who could escape notice even in a virtually empty room. He didn't look familiar.

Will and Freya talked only a little on the short drive to Freya's flat, but otherwise, the only conversation in the car came from the talk show on the radio.

Freya's house, or rather, Bryn's house, was a double-wide building decorated in fragments of Victorian architecture covered up with modern building materials, giving it a grotesque appearance that was in stark contrast with the rest of the neighbourhood. The roof was angled more to the left than centered; the awnings on the windows were sunken in, shadowing the glass, brand-new beige-coloured siding covered up otherwise gorgeous brick-and-stonework, and there was wrought-iron everywhere around the property, framing it in a twisted fence.

A chill passed down Merlin's spine when he walked through the front gate, and there was an echoing clang rippling through the magical sphere. He had the distinct sensation of a lock being turned, a door being closed, forbidding and forgotten. If he walked through the front doors, he knew almost instantly, there would be no leaving, not without either the permission of the person who'd set the wards, or by complete brute force.

The closer he came to the front steps, the more Merlin could sense the fraying threads of the wards, as if someone had tried again and again to escape, and the effort had caused something of an unravelling that wasn't quite complete. He'd finish it off, later, cutting a hole that he could get through if he needed to. He slowed down, glancing over his shoulder in the hopes that he could make a getaway, but Will raised both brows at him and clamped a heavy hand on his arm and guided him inside.

For a moment, a brief moment, Merlin had a flare of doubt, and the words _double-agent_ popped in his head.

Then he remembered that this was _Will_ , whom he'd known since they were both in nappies, and a flush of shame ran through him that he'd even _thought_ that of Will.

Merlin held his breath as he walked over the threshold, bracing himself for anything that might happen, but beyond the magical fall of metaphorical comfort and the nagging desire to stay, there wasn't anything overt or harmful. Will's fingers tightened around his arm, though, and Merlin caught his questioning brow, so he must have felt it, too. Merlin gave him a tight little nod.

"I'm going to... I'm going to go get Bryn, let him know we're home," Freya said, tossing a hasty "Make yourself comfortable" over her shoulder and practically running out of the room.

"Sit your arse down," Will said, shoving Merlin onto the couch. Merlin let himself fall, sliding over to the armrest, getting as far away as possible.

"Where's my phone?"

"Stop worrying. I have it," Will said, dropping his duffel bag against the wall and dumping his jacket on top of it before sitting down. He reached for one of the television remotes that were neatly lined up on the coffee table and turned the small plasmascreen on.

"What time is it?" Merlin asked.

"Fifteen ten," Will said, barely glancing at his watch.

"Shite. Give me my phone."

"No."

"I have to call Arthur, he's going to be worried about me. Give me my phone."

"I could give a shite about Pendragon," Will said. He left the channel on the news network, watching the sports highlights.

"You don't get it. I have work to finish. He's expecting it to be finished by the time he gets back."

"It can wait," Will said.

"No, it can't. It really can't," Merlin said. He put a whiny plead into his voice. "I have to get back."

"No, you don't."

"You don't get it, Will --"

Merlin fell silent abruptly and kept his eyes averted when Freya came back, her heavy, smothering coat gone. She sat awkwardly down in the overstuffed chair on Merlin's other side, and instead of making eye contact with her, he leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

"Merlin --" she began.

"I'm not talking to you," Merlin snapped.

Will reached over and smacked Merlin on the arm. "That's no way to talk to her --"

"Oh, you don't think so? And how would you talk to someone who wouldn't mind their own bloody business and kept sticking their nose where it didn't belong?" Freya's cheeks coloured indignantly, and Merlin felt terrible, but he pressed on. "You don't know what's going on. You. You don't understand. I told you to leave it, Freya -- and I told you to butt out, Will. Why can't you do that?"

"We're worried about you," Freya said finally. "If he's hurting you --"

"You see this?" Merlin pointed at his face. "I slipped in the fucking shower, all right?"

"Bollocks," Will said. "We were talking, yeah? You and me. You were _fine_. Then you go upstairs with that pillock, don't come down when he's gone, and the next thing I see is your fat lip and your swollen face. You can't tell me you _took a shower_ \--"

"I did," Merlin insisted.

"You didn't."

"I did!"

"You didn't."

"Boys!" Freya's voice was preternaturally loud, and Merlin was almost convinced he could hear a deep growl in her tone. Her hands gripped the armrests, her fingernails white from the pressure, nearly clawing through the thick leather. "Stop fighting. Merlin, you can't fool me, I know your Arthur is hurting you. I know people who've been there."

"Like who? You?" Merlin snorted.

Freya's face went pale, and she pressed her lips together before snapping, "He's going to kill you, you know that? The minute you don't do what he wants. The minute you can't do what he wants. Do you really think you can keep him happy? He'll get bored, and you know what they do when people like him get bored?"

"He wouldn't hurt me," Merlin said petulantly.

"So what's that on your face, then?" Bryn said, appearing in the doorway. He rolled up his sleeves with the mannerisms of someone trying to look casual, as if he hadn't been eavesdropping all along. He walked into the room and towered over Merlin; Merlin couldn't help but try to shrink into himself to get away from the bully who'd plagued him as a child. Bryn took his face roughly and lifted Merlin's chin. Merlin didn't look at him, but he pulled away. "Looks like a handprint to me."

"It's not," Merlin said, his voice low.

"'Fraid it is, mate," Will said.

"He's not good for you, Merlin. We'll give you a place --" Freya said, only to wither into silence at Bryn's glare.

"What did you do to deserve this?" Bryn asked, his voice kindly. Merlin remarked that the way Bryn asked questions was very much putting the blame on _Merlin_ and not on Arthur, and Merlin lowered his head, fidgeting with his hands.

"It weren't me," Merlin said. "I didn't do anything."

"Of course you didn't," Bryn said, his voice sickly sweet and reassuring, and Merlin glanced at Freya in time to see a Pavlovian response from her. Her frown eased, and she seemed reassured by what Bryn said. 

_Jesus. All these years with him, and he had her trained like a goddamn dog._ The thought of it made Merlin sick.

"Something upset him. He has a bit of a temper. I can tell. I have one too," Bryn said, still standing over Merlin, and Merlin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his head down, staring at the floor. Every muscle in his body was tense with the flight instinct he knew so well from his childhood. Bryn was too close, and he hadn't forgotten years of schoolyard bullying. "It's not your fault. You were in the way. He wouldn't hit you."

"No, he wouldn't," Merlin agreed, letting himself sound relieved, drawing from the knowledge that Arthur _wouldn't_ have hit him, that he'd hated having to do it. At the same time, the sick feeling in his stomach grew, because Bryn was _awfully_ good at psychological manipulation. Merlin had prepared to react accordingly, but he caught himself responding despite knowing better. Some of it was for his cover, but the rest? He wondered if the magic he'd sensed upon walking through the door had something to do with it.

Before Merlin could be any more impressed by Bryn's sudden psychological genius, Bryn put his own foot in his mouth by moving too fast, asking, "What was it? What made him so angry?"

A magical compulsion nearly made Merlin start talking. He was sure it was the magic on the house. Merlin pressed his lips tightly.

"You can tell us," Freya encouraged. "We won't tell him you told us."

Merlin grit his teeth and shook his head. The compulsion grew stronger -- he could feel it crawling on his skin like a leech trying to find the right spot to start suckling, and he had to resist the urge to scrape it off his arm. Bryn made a soft sound of disappointment, and Merlin flinched involuntarily.

"Tell us," Bryn said. There was no cajoling in his tone, no snake-oil salesman sleaze to his voice. It was an order, plain and simple, and he wanted answers now. When Merlin didn't say anything, Bryn muttered something under his breath, and a wash of magic settled around Merlin.

"There's nothing to talk about," Merlin said. At his words, the magic tightened in a noose around him, not quite suffocating, but leaving him with the feeling that he was safe and sound in this house with these people and that he should _trust_ them. It wasn't strong enough to override Merlin's residual childhood fear of schoolyard bullies. It wasn't enough to make him betray Arthur or anyone else. He shrugged it off. "Nothing. And you can't make me say anything."

When Bryn spoke this time, he sounded this side shy of delivering a taste of his ham-fisted medicine to Merlin, restrained only by the wonder of what might happen _later_ if he did and when Arthur found out. "Don't be so sure about that."

Merlin risked a glance up. He could tell that Bryn dearly wanted to _do_ something, but something -- probably fear of Arthur, or Tristan, or whoever else who counted as his superior in the NWO who was interested in Arthur -- stopped him. "Look. I don't need to be here, all right? I'm going to go."

He stood up. Bryn grabbed his arm, his fingers tightening painfully. The smile was forced, and so was the kind, _we're mates, aren't we_ expression that he'd pasted on his face. "Why don't you take a seat? I'll give Arthur a call. I'll explain the situation, smooth things over, yeah? Ask him to come over for a beer and pick you up, or maybe we can drop you off somewhere. How does that sound?"

"All right, I suppose," Merlin said cautiously, sitting back down slowly. Bryn was lying through his teeth. He wasn't going to call. Merlin glanced at Will, but Will's attention was glued to the TV.

  
**ooOOoo**   


When Arthur returned to his office after the conversation with his father -- a conversation that left Arthur wondering what was _really_ going on -- not only had the useless receptionist booked an appointment for Cenred King for later in the day, but Merlin _still hadn't texted him_.

He held out until nearly 1600 hours before calling Kay.

"He seemed fine when they marched him into the house. I haven't noticed any explosions, and I've been keeping my ear out for horror movie yelling," Kay said. He rattled off the address and Arthur memorized it. "Bohrs is on his way. He'd have been here sooner, but he said something rude about cleaning up after other people. By the way, you need a new coffee table."

The desk phone rang. Arthur ignored it.

"Never liked the old one, anyway. It was a gift from Morgana," Arthur said. He was convinced that she had given it to him for the express purpose of doing his knees in, because every time he walked around it, one of the edges caught him in the leg. He rubbed his temple, falling silent, trying to make a decision. The longer he was out of touch with Merlin, the harder it was to come up with a plan. There were too many unknown factors, too many random variables. He reminded himself that Merlin was with his old school chums, that, despite Bryn having been -- _and still was_ \-- a schoolyard bully, Freya and Will were at least Merlin's friends.

Unless they all had the wool pulled over their eyes and he'd lost Merlin forever. The stone weighing down his stomach was making him ill.

Kay picked up on his mood, because he asked, "You want me to pull Merlin out?"

"How many people are in there?"

"As far as I can tell, Bryn's got two goons with him in the back of the house. Freya and Will have Merlin corralled in one of the front rooms. There's one other person in there with them. Don't recognize him, and he's not ringing any bells from the Directory watch list."

"Can you ID him later?"

"Do you one better. Have him on my camera phone."

"Good man. What are they doing now?" Arthur asked, leaning forward, elbow on the desk. He rubbed his forehead.

"Not much. Talking, I guess. The telly's on. Every now and then Merlin stands up like he's about to leave, but someone pulls him back down. I think he's losing his patience."

"He's not the only one," Arthur said.

"Want me to get him?" Kay asked again.

"No, not yet," Arthur said with an exhaled sigh. "Not by yourself, anyway. If nothing happens in the next hour, if we don't hear from him, we'll re-evaluate the situation."

"I'll keep an eye out," Kay said. He paused, and added, "He'll be fine. It's Merlin we're talking about here."

"Exactly what worries me," Arthur said humourlessly. "Watch yourself."

"Yes, sir," Kay said, with something of a hint of mockery. He hung up before Arthur could call him on it.

Arthur pushed papers, crunched numbers, and deleted emails one by one before giving up, selecting the hundred-and-change that had come in while he had been in his meeting earlier, and deleted it all. He set up a few _if it doesn't contain the following keywords and isn't from these people, I don't give a flying fuck_ rules to handle the incoming volume of business-related spam, ignored another phone call, and took advantage of his all-access pass to the network to nose through his father's personal drive.

If the technological revolution had been left up to Uther, it would never had happened in the first place. Administrative assistants would still be secretaries with typewriters and headphones. Personal assistants wouldn't exist -- the Colonel hated them -- and there would be at least one manservant dogging his steps wherever he went. Uther wouldn't be tied to his cell phone because cell phones wouldn't exist, and the world would slow down and operate at one speed: Pendragon time, where critical decisions would await his purview once he received the telegram.

Despite Uther's intolerance for all things modern and electronic, despite his disdain for the newest toys on the market -- anything from handheld devices to tablets to smartphones -- his personal hard drive was surprisingly full. The deleted folder even more so; Uther didn't grasp the concept that simply because it was shaped like a rubbish bin, it didn't mean that the contents weren't picked up by a secure shredding company every few days to remove the evidence.

Trying to find anything useful -- the word _incriminating_ tried to bubble to the surface of Arthur's thoughts more than once, but he pointedly shoved it away -- was the hard part. There were no file structures, no naming convention, no organization whatsoever. If there was ever a reason for Arthur to agree with the Colonel's moaning for the old days where some poor sap was paid barely above minimum wage in exchange for indentured service, it was _this_ chaos of a virtual world. Arthur doubted that even Merlin would be able to sort through this mess.

After opening up forty files using a virtual remote desktop affair (that Arthur didn't pretend to half-understand, but was grateful that Merlin _did_ ) to make it look as if the files had been accessed by none other but the Colonel himself, Arthur threw in the towel. More than half of the files were documents saved with the first few words of the report. There was a copy of a webpage full of broken links but that looked to be a travel site for a vacation to Cyprus that Arthur remember Uther taking six or seven years prior. There was a copy of an email for a purchase order for office supplies from 2004. And, much to Arthur's amusement, there was a recipe for pulled pork from one of Uther's Canadian colleagues.

Out of all the items that Arthur looked at, only three had anything to do with recent business.

Arthur wasn't going to find anything this way. He knew Merlin would make short work of scanning the entirety of Pendragon's secure network and pull out exactly the files Arthur needed to see, whether or not he knew he needed to see them in the first place.

Thinking about Merlin made Arthur glance at the computer clock -- and not for the first time, he reached for his phone to check and make certain that he hadn't missed a text or an incoming call.

Before he could call Kay -- it was one minute to the deadline Arthur had set -- three things occurred at once: two calendar alerts popped up on the screen and Gwaine came waltzing into his office without so much as a knock on the door. He ignored Gwaine and glanced at the messages on his screen. One was for his meeting with Cenred King at 1630, to be held in his office; the second was an update to that appointment. Now, he was booked in for a dinner at 1900 at one of the fancier restaurants in town, and he noted that the receptionist had added a footnote.

_Mr. King requests that you bring Merlin?????_

Arthur leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face with one hand. Apparently someone at the front desk had aspirations of becoming his personal assistant if they were taking it upon themselves to schedule appointments for him and asking presumptuous questions. Arthur could almost hear the question carefully hidden behind all the question marks: _what is a merlin and what does it have to do with the meeting_. He was going to have to fire this person, whoever it is, or find himself someone competent as his assistant.

Considering all the different aspects of his job right now, Arthur added _trustworthy_ and _loyal_ to the list of skill requirements.

Idly, he tried to remember which of his men had a business background and who wouldn't mind sitting on their arses fielding phone calls. Arthur glanced up at the sound of Gwaine clearing his throat, demanding attention, and calculated the odds of being able to convince Gwaine that answering phones was part of his job description as bodyguard.

He sat on his arse all day, anyway. That was one half of the job down.

"What?"

"I take from your tone that there's been no word from Merlin, then?" Gwaine asked, sounding just as concerned as Arthur felt. 

"No. Kay let me know where they were, though. I'm debating the merits of getting him myself," Arthur said, leaning back in his chair again. He stretched slightly, feeling tension growing in his shoulders. A quick glance past Gwaine confirmed that the office door was shut, and he knew the room had been swept for bugs already. Finally, he said, "On the one hand, walking up to the house and asking, _may I have my boyfriend back_ smacks of playing right into Bryn's hands. There's no way I'm letting that pillock get the advantage."

Arthur was under no illusions -- Bryn and Freya both knew how close Will and Merlin were and they were willing to use that to their own ends. Once they found out that Merlin was with Will, all bets were off and a new plan was implemented that would likely involve bringing them both into the NWO whether they liked it or not, and with or without Arthur. There was also the niggling knowledge, both instinctive and gathered from months and months of Directory surveillance and psychological profiling, of how Bryn operated. Merlin might have fortuitously fallen into Bryn's lap, but Arthur didn't think Bryn was above using the situation to send a message.

Arthur had made it clear that the NWO couldn't use Merlin -- for whatever reason -- without Arthur's say so. 

Given the current situation, their response to that was a very clear _see how easily I can get him? It would be easier on you if you simply did what we told you to do._

"The way I see it," Gwaine said, "It's more of a stalemate."

Arthur waited for Gwaine to elaborate, and when Gwaine riffled through the stack of small yellow Phone Call Log sheets in his hands instead of answering, he asked, "How?"

Gwaine gave him a _where's your head_ glance and said, "You know where Merlin is, when, by rights, you shouldn't. That will throw Bryn off. Also, you've got a crack assault team at your disposal. We'll be showing up right on his doorstep. That will make him drop a load in his trousers."

Arthur very nearly slapped himself in the head. Nearly. Instead, he released a heavy breath and raised both brows. "I do have a crack team at my disposal, don't I?"

"Too right you do," Gwaine said.

Arthur pursed his lips in thought, the plan of attack already falling into place in his head. It was all he could do to keep himself from reaching inside his coat pocket to use his phone to call up a map of the area Merlin and Kay were in right now, and use GoogleMaps to get the topography, the streetview, and a close-up of the house layout.

"You know we'll go and get him the second you give us the nod. We don't like Merlin being alone any more than you do." Gwaine was trying to be casual, indifferent, unconcerned. He covered up the tension in his body by affecting a laissez-faire pose that was on the wrong side of relaxed, his chin down as he flipped through the papers in his hands. There wasn't the faintest hint of tremble or worry in his voice. Not the slightest bit of anxiety. 

There were times when Arthur couldn't read his friend at all, when he was distanced, aloof, withdrawn. This wasn't one of those times. Gwaine was all but holding himself back from loudly declaring _why aren't you giving the bloody order already_?

That was a good question.

Arthur told himself that it was because he had to trust Merlin. Merlin was as well-trained as any of them. He could take anything that was thrown out of him. If he were imprisoned, he'd find his way out. If he were tortured, he wouldn't say anything. And, if all else failed, Arthur was _certain_ that he'd have heard something about a massive explosion in a part of London on the news by now.

"Well?" Gwaine prompted, trying to see if he'd convinced Arthur yet. 

Arthur gestured to the collection of papers in Gwaine's hands. "What are those?"

"Phone messages," Gwaine said, doing his best to smooth out the rolled crumple that they were in, tossing the curdled pile on Arthur's desk. He thumbed over his shoulder and slid his hands in his pant pockets. "The receptionist. You know the one. Short brunette, nice on the eyes, glasses with black frames? Been walking them over _all_ afternoon."

Arthur flipped through the messages. "They're all from King's secretary."

"I noticed that." Gwaine tried to look innocent. "We're going out tonight, then?"

"I apparently have no secrets from you," Arthur said, trying to read the receptionist's scribble.

"None whatsoever. There's a special request for Merlin's presence as well," Gwaine said, raising both brows.

"Hm." Arthur continued to flip through the phone messages, dropping them in the bin one by one. He estimated that he'd be about three quarters through the pile before Gwaine folded.

Gwaine might have the patience to stay out in the field without moving, not even answering a call of nature unless it was absolutely necessary, but there were certain things -- notably knowing that there was a mission coming up and having to wait for the go order -- that drove the sniper in Gwaine up the wall. Gwaine was a man who could outwait God, but when it was about something that mattered to him, he couldn't wait at all.

Neither could Arthur, but he was willing to wait until he'd made his way through the chronological queue of phone messages before calling the team together.

"Oh, for pity's sake, they all say the same thing," Gwaine said, reaching over the desk. He snatched the papers out of Arthur's hands, tossed them all in the bin roughly, and gestured. "Let's go. Now."

Arthur smirked. He was on the phone to Kay before they were out of the office. Gwaine locked up behind them.

"Kay. Any changes?" Arthur asked.

"No, sir. Oh, one. Bohrs is here, and he brought bad coffee. Someone needs to educate him on proper stakeout food."

"I'll have Owain talk to him," Arthur said. He followed Gwaine down the corridor. "Have a walk around and report back. We're coming to get him."

"Well, it's about time," Kay said, and Arthur swore he heard the sound of knuckles cracking in anticipation. "I'll call you in ten."

Arthur hung up just as Gwaine pushed the call button for the elevator. They lingered in the lobby in silence, Arthur pacing restlessly. He walked back and forth, back and forth, sighing inwardly at the waved hand and breathy "Oh, sir! Mister Pendragon, sir!" coming from behind the reception desk.

Gwaine's _short brunette, nice on the eyes, glasses with black frames_ did not do the receptionist justice. She was slim, petite and curvy, wearing subdued black slacks, a white blouse with an oversized collar and too many undone buttons, and a form-fitting vest that didn't leave the outline of her breasts to the imagination. Her brown hair was short, barely brushing her shoulders. Her glasses were tortoiseshells, the frames thick, shaped in narrow rectangles that suited the oval shape of her face. Her makeup was impeccable, her jewellery subdued, and except for the glimpse of provocative cleavage, Arthur was certain any other hot-blooded man who liked women would give her a second look.

Her appearance didn't concern him. What did -- he'd never seen her before. "You must be a temp."

"I am. I started Monday," she said. She had a squeaky voice, shrill and annoying, almost like fingernails on a chalkboard. "Did you get my messages?"

Arthur reeled a bit in surprise. A temp was handling the senior management floor. That was unheard of. If someone was off sick or away, an experienced receptionist was commandeered from the other sections. It seemed an absurd coincidence that every receptionist in the building was off sick and unable to cover this floor and requiring the assistance of a _temp_.

"Yes." Arthur leaned against the desk, one arm draped over the counter, leaning down to tower over her as if he couldn't take his eyes from her cleavage, which looked to be exactly what she had planned when she selected this outfit to wear that morning. He had the sudden and unshakeable impression that she was only here because she was shopping for a husband. A rich one. 

She smiled brilliantly at him, as if expecting him to say _thank you_ or _much appreciated_ or some other pat-on-the-head positive reinforcement bollocks that he couldn't be bothered with, not considering that this woman was the reason why he had no choice but to meet with Cenred King _for dinner_. When Arthur didn't say anything, she offered, "I noticed that you don't have a secretary. That man sitting outside your office said he didn't do phones."

Arthur made a mental note to fix that. From now on, Gwaine _would_ do phones.

"I didn't catch your name," Arthur said.

The woman took that as an invitation to tell him her life story. "Beth. Bethany, actually, but everyone calls me Beth. Some people call me Becka for some reason, because they hear Beth and they think it's short for Rebecca, but when I correct them, they assume my name's short for Elizabeth --"

"Bethany." Arthur spoke her name with such finality that she shut up in an instant. _Thank fuck._ At least when Merlin babbled, Arthur was still able to collect his thoughts.

"Yes, Mister Pendragon?"

"You scheduled an appointment for me with Cenred King."

"Yes, sir," Beth said eagerly.

"You're fired." Arthur straightened, brushing off his suit. Beth's expression went from pleased with herself to absolutely crestfallen. Arthur felt like a giant heel, and he immediately made plans to have someone call the temp company to give her a good reference so that she could have a better opportunity somewhere else.

But only if she were legitimate. He'd have to find out where she came from, first.

"You can't --" she protested feebly.

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "What was it that you called me earlier?"

"Erm." Beth swallowed. "Mister Pendragon?"

"And what's the name of the company you're working for today?" Arthur asked. He heard the bell of the elevator's arrival, and rapped a knuckle on the counter. "You'll find that the owner's son can do many, many things. Firing you is the least of them."

"... I need this job," Beth said, standing up slowly, only to promptly sit on her rolling chair again -- which nearly slipped out from underneath her in what Arthur noted was a practiced move, intending on making whoever she was speaking to rush to her aid.

"Security will escort you out," Arthur said, making it sound as if he were doing her a favour. He turned away from her pale, stunned face and stepped into the elevator that Gwaine was holding open for him, and watched the doors slide shut. They'd descended three floors before Arthur spoke.

"Do me a favour. Find out where she came from," Arthur said.

"I did," Gwaine said. Arthur gave him a sharp, surprised look, and Gwaine rolled his eyes. "All right. _Perce_ did. Called HR, tracked down the temp agency, phoned up her references."

"And?"

"Nobody's ever heard of her." Gwaine followed his own words with a frown and a step away from the glare Arthur was giving him. "Don't give me that. I figured you'd bounce her the minute you found out she booked you with King."

Arthur's lips pressed so tightly together that when he spoke again, they were tingling with the returning sensation of pins and needles through the numbness. "You couldn't be bothered to tell me that little detail earlier? That maybe, if I'd heard that before, I'd want to arrange someone to follow her, find out who she works for --"

"Pellinor's in the lobby, just waiting for her to leave for the day," Gwaine said. Arthur shot him another look as the elevator doors opened at the private subbasement parking level, and Gwaine checked out the environs before nodding and stepping out first. "Leon came by looking for you when you were in the board meeting this morning. His idea."

"Oh, thank God. For a minute, I thought you had more brain cells to rub together than I knew about," Arthur said. Gwaine wasn't known for forethought or planning -- he was very much either a do-his-own-thing sort of person, but only when he wasn't going with the crowd in the first place. Whoever had put him together on conception had skipped the leadership DNA.

"I'm saving them for a special occasion," Gwaine said, shrugging a shoulder.

Perceval had the car warmed up and waiting for them at the curb a few feet from the elevator. Gwaine got in the front, and before Arthur had even shut the door behind him, he was calling a few members of his team that he knew weren't busy.

He had plans. He knew exactly how he wanted this to go, and the only thing he knew was that he was also running the risk of things going very, very badly.

* * *

"So, Bohrs did a walk around," Kay began without preamble, pausing to exhale a small, quiet breath. "And he didn't come back. I went looking for him and found him on the very edge of the property, right behind the yard, and I guess he was stuck."

"Stuck how?" Arthur asked. He had the mental image of Bohrs up to his hips in quicksand, which was a ridiculous notion in downtown London.

"He says it's stupid. He suddenly had the feeling that he didn't want to leave, even though he knew he needed to get back before he got caught," Kay said. "I yanked him out and the urge to stay went away. I did a bit of an experiment and stood in the same spot, but I didn't feel anything, and the difference being, I'm wearing Kathy's charm, and he weren't."

Arthur had considered that someone in Bryn's position -- a position that currently included having call to have far more men protecting him and keeping Merlin "captive", if that was the right word -- would take every precaution against intruders. If not by using physical security or electronic surveillance, then, definitely, by magic.

Without Merlin to advise him, Arthur had considered taking the direct approach, but Kay's information changed things slightly.

"-- probably want to have everyone wear the damn things, just to be on the safe side," Kay was saying. Arthur nodded even though Kay couldn't see him over the phone. "Lamorak and Bedivere just drove by, so we're waiting on you."

"Does Bohrs have his necklace?"

"No," Kay said with a humourless chuckle. "He said it was too girly, but I think he's having a change of heart now. I'll double-check with the others, get them set in position, and meet you at the front of the house."

"All right." Arthur hung up. To Gwaine and Perceval, he said, "There's wards around the house. Kay said the necklaces Kathy sent protected him, but Bohrs wasn't wearing his and he couldn't find the will to leave the property."

"I have mine," Perceval said.

"You do?"

Perceval gave Gwaine a long, inscrutable look before returning his attention to driving. They were less than five minutes out, and Arthur was growing antsy. "You made me put it on this morning."

"I did," Gwaine agreed slowly. His expression brightened a moment later, and he grinned. "I _did_. That's right. Sorry, I forgot. I must've been otherwise distracted at the time."

"You're always otherwise distracted," Perceval said.

"It's the bloody blue balls," Gwaine said, a tone of complaint in his voice. "If you haven't had your nuts off in a while, it would distract you, too."

Perceval shook his head imperceptibly and caught Arthur's eyes in the rear-view mirror. "Was he this bad when you two were dating?"

"No," Gwaine said automatically. 

"Probably," Arthur said. "We were teenagers. Raging hormones and all that. I don't think I'd have noticed how bloody _whiny_ and _needy_ he was, but if I had, I doubt I'd have gone out with him in the first place."

"Oi!"

Arthur reached over and clasped a hand on Perceval's shoulder. "You're a brave man, you are, dealing with this one. I hope you sort him out."

Perceval's smirk was an almost smile, except they'd arrived at their destination. He parked on the side of the road across the street from the house. Kay's car was a nondescript middle-income vehicle that fit in with the surroundings, while Bohrs' larger truck was a sore thumb half-blocking someone's driveway. Bohrs walked over to them, tapped on the driver's door glass, and Perceval lowered the window halfway.

"Worked out the perimeter as best as we could," Bohrs said. "Kay figures it's from the fence to just behind the shed at the back of the house. It's mostly marked by the property line, but it's not exactly a perfect square, so watch yourselves at the edges. We didn't notice any security."

"That doesn't mean anything," Gwaine said, craning his neck to look through the windshield, and past Perceval, using a handheld scope for a better look. "Might be a couple of cameras on the corners up there, but I think they might be aimed to the front door, not the street."

"How do you want to work this?" Bohrs asked. Arthur spotted Kay coming toward them. Kay leaned against the front fender of the car, shoving his hands in his pockets. He didn't look any worse for wear beyond a few scratches and bruises from the fight with Will.

"Gwaine, you're wearing Kathy's necklace?" Arthur asked.

"I am."

"All right. Bohrs, you're staying with me. Kay and Gwaine, you're knocking on the door."

There was a flicker of grateful relief from Gwaine and a smile of vengeful glee from Kay.

"Perce, stay just outside the front fence, but be ready to grab Merlin or either of these two in case they can't get out."

Perceval nodded. 

"Are Lamorak and Bedivere in position?"

"They are," Kay said. Neither Lamorak or Bedivere were snipers, but their marksmanship excelled at short range. Arthur would have preferred Geraint and Galahad, but they were on Morgana protective detail for the day, and probably loving every minute of it. Kay reached into his coat, handing Perceval a small box. Perceval cracked it open and passed around the earwigs.

"Let's go, then. No point in waiting any longer." Arthur was doing his best to cover it up, but not hearing from Merlin for several hours had made him tense and nervous.

Gwaine and Perceval climbed out of the car; Kay and Gwaine walked side-by-side toward the front fencing, Perceval on their heels. Arthur stood next to Bohrs, his hands in his trouser pockets, trying his best to look unaffected and bored. Perceval stopped a foot from the front gate, knocking a rock in the hinge to keep it from shutting. 

Once they reached the front stoop, they paused. Before Arthur could ask why, he heard Gwaine ask, "You want to handle this, or shall I?"

"I'll do it," Kay said.

"Are you sure? Because you're not exactly bubbling at the brim with charm," Gwaine said.

"You want to charm them? Be my guest. But do it after I punch Will's face in," Kay said. "I'll do the talking."

Gwaine bowed his head in agreement, but Arthur heard the small snicker of amusement over the earwig.

When Kay knocked on the door, he didn't knock. He _pounded_ , ferocious and fierce, the door bowing and trembling and splintering as if Hercules himself -- or Perceval -- had delivered the blow. 

They waited. This was the worst part. Arthur fought to keep his stance loose, but the truth was, he wanted to be in the front of the group, barging his way in. Before he could bark the order to _kick the bloody door in_ , the door cracked open and was pulled wide by someone who filled the entrance shoulder-to-shoulder. Arthur could see the gun in his hand, and Bohrs could see it too if the way he straightened slightly was any indication.

There was no need to shout a warning. If they could see it from where they were standing, then Gwaine and Kay could, too, particularly when the man's expression twisted in something of recognition -- _must be one of Bryn's goons from the club_ , Arthur thought -- and raised his gun.

It was a smooth grab and twist and crush of wrist in Kay's iron grip for the weapon to slip out of the man's hand, but it was Gwaine's foot in the man's chest that kicked him further into the house. Kay gave Gwaine the gun -- short range or long range, Gwaine was still by far the best among them, and Kay was more useful when his hands were free. Gwaine checked and cleared the gun in three seconds flat and raised it at someone's shadow in the corridor.

There was a brief pause, a stalemate, a challenge. 

"Nice talking," Gwaine commented.

"I thought you'd like that," Kay said.

Gwaine gestured faintly with the gun, and stepped inside, Kay right behind him.

There was silence, then a sputter of sound, and nothing.

"Merlin!" Kay shouted.

"Good evening, gents," Gwaine said pleasantly. "Beautiful day for a home invasion, isn't it?"

Arthur closed his eyes, ignoring the pain blooming in his forehead.

"Merlin!" Kay shouted again.

"I'm here!" Merlin shouted back, but he sounded far away, his voice muffled by walls and furniture and people. 

"Are you all right?" Kay shouted.

"I'm fine -- let me go, damn it! Will -- get your damn hands off... Fuck off! Quit grabbing at -- _OW!_ Freya!"

There were the sounds of a scuffle. Through the open doorway, Arthur could see Gwaine, the gun in his hands immobile, trained on one person, but he knew that he could switch targets and still hit dead centre without stopping to aim. Kay had vanished off to the side, and Arthur couldn't see him anymore.

"I just want to _go!_ " Merlin shouted. "Leave me... Leave me alone!"

"Merlin! Merlin! You don't have to go, you could just stay here --" this from Freya, who sounded both angry and pleading at the same time.

"I don't want to stay here. I want to go _home_. You're keeping me against my fucking will --"

"That's because you're a bloody pillock who doesn't have a drop of self-preservation in his body. We keep telling you, we're trying to _help_ \--" Will said. There was a scuffle, a sharp cry, the sound of something breaking. "Will you shut up and sit down? You're making it worse."

"Will, you bloody fucking arse, you tore my --"

"Will --" Arthur decided that Kay was being generous, if he was giving Will some warning. Normally, he would stealth his way up to people and disable them without their ever knowing that he'd been there. In almost the next heartbeat, Arthur heard a sickening crunch and a loud thump over the earwig. 

There was a pause -- the sort of silence that seemed to follow a hurricane, when all was clear overhead for miles in the calm of the storm before the winds raged and the wrath of God came down again. Arthur could imagine the scene in his head. Kay standing over a sprawled Will, everyone else looking on, all of them too stunned to say or do anything but stare.

A scuffle, a grunt, the sounds of blows landing. Arthur tilted his head, but Gwaine wasn't moving, and that was as good a sign as any that he thought that Kay had the situation well in hand. There was movement toward the back of the house, and Gwaine said, as pleasant as a bubbly hostess in one of those fast food restaurant-style chain stores that always seemed to crop up, "If you'll just wait a moment, we'll be right with you."

Bohrs snorted, trying to muffle his laughter.

This was another reason why Arthur preferred that Gwaine be out in the field, playing sniper. He was a cheeky bugger. Never knew when to shut up. He could always be depended on to say exactly the right thing to escalate the situation, whether Arthur intended for that to happen or not.

More fighting. More blows landing. 

"I have Bryn in my sights," Lamorak said, his voice flat and emotionless. He didn't have much stomach for killing -- not any more than the rest of them -- but when it came to protecting the team, Lamorak would do whatever he needed to.

"Is your laser on?" Arthur asked. None of the team needed a laser to verify their shot (Arthur had made certain that everyone didn't even need a scope), but it was an intimidation tactic that Arthur wasn't above using. Especially now.

"Let him sweat," Arthur said. He knew that Lamorak would let the laser drift from his target only long enough to attract Bryn's attention, to let him know it was there, before he put the laser right where he meant it to go.

There was more movement in the background, and Arthur had the distinct impression that Bryn was trying to get out of the line of fire. If he smiled, it had absolutely nothing to do with the other man's discomfort.

Maybe just a little.

There was another loud crash over the earwig. Wood splintered, glass shattered, fine crystal tinkled down. Something loud and heavy tipped over and fell on the floor.

"Stay down, mate," Kay said. His voice was dangerously low, a lover's whisper, when he said, "Payback's a bitch, isn't it, Will?"

"You brode my fuddin' node," Will said, his voice strangled.

"You're lucky it's just your nose," Kay said. "Come on, Merlin. Let's go."

"Merlin! Don't go with them. Please stay. You know you'll be safe with us --" Freya pleaded, and Arthur bristled at the undertone of threat in her voice, but bless him, Merlin played dumb, as if he had no idea what Freya was hinting.

"This is all your fault, you know!" Merlin said. "Will getting hurt, _me_ getting hurt, this whole mess. I were talking him into this, you know, just like Bryn asked me to do months ago, recruiting whoever would listen, remember? You think he'll want to join you now?"

"You're such an idiot!" Freya blurted out. "You really think he'd do anything you ask? It doesn't work that way!"

"You're not listening! You haven't heard a single thing I said! Arthur's lovely. He really is. He does things for me -- you wouldn't understand --"

"Merlin?" Kay said, impatient. "Let's go."

"Yeah, yeah, all right. Just. One second. My phone --" there was a pause, and, softer, Merlin said, "Get Will to A&E, yeah? And maybe, _maybe_ , I'll begin to forgive you for this cock up."

"Merlin!"

With relief he hadn't known he was capable of feeling, Arthur watched as Merlin walked through the open doorway, Kay right behind him, Gwaine pulling up the rear. He restrained the urge to bolt forward to grab Merlin, swallowing the angry bile at Bryn's cocky "Don't worry, Freya. He won't go far."

Arthur hadn't forgotten the magic that surrounded the property. He wasn't convinced that the charms that Kathy had given the team would be effective even though Merlin had assured him that Kathy had done a good job with the protection spells, and he wouldn't believe it until he saw Kay and Gwaine cross the fence with his own eyes. They might be protected, but Merlin wasn't.

It had been a decision that they'd made early one morning following a late night strategizing possible _what if_ situations that Arthur sincerely hoped that the team would never find themselves in. Their necklaces -- the dragon and the Celtic knot that Kathy had picked out for them -- were pendants that weren't much bigger than a two-pound coin, set on leather cords. They could wear them, but if they were being honest, Arthur's necklace was hardly in keeping with his cover and wouldn't be unless it was made out of gold. Merlin might be able to get away with wearing the Celtic knot, but he was _Welsh_ , and sometimes he acted as if it were some sort of affront for him to wear it in the first place. In the end, Merlin had said to leave them off, that the bond between their tattoos would protect the other from spells meant to twist the will, and had left it at that.

Arthur wished that they weren't about to find out how true Merlin's conviction was.

Freya crept out of the house following Gwaine, ignoring the gun that he had trained on her, and she said, "Merlin! If you leave, I'm never going to talk to you again!"

Merlin whirled around, but not before Arthur caught the outrage on his face. "What? Really? You're giving me an ultimatum? You bloody well _kidnap_ me, and you've the balls to give me _conditions_? Well, _fuck you_."

"Merlin," Will said, shoulder against the doorway, his hand on his nose, blood streaming down his face, covering his mouth and chin. "Don'd go 'way mad. She doesn'd meand id."

"Don't talk to me!" Merlin yelled, pointing at Will. Kay took Merlin's arm and led him toward the open gate. Gwaine continued to walk backward, the gun raised, and it wasn't until he was in the middle of the front yard that Arthur spotted the second dot -- this one from Bedivere -- appear on Bryn's chest. Bryn, to his credit, did a good job of appearing unconcerned, following after Freya and Merlin with a casual, unhurried stride. There was a smirk on his face, as if he knew full well that none of them could leave once they were inside.

He was in for a surprise if Kathy's charms worked.

Kay paused just before crossing the mystical threshold, glancing up as if he were thinking the same thing, and then, without difficulty, walked through, his hand still on Merlin's arm. Merlin slowed down a little, but otherwise came through without resistance -- there had been a bit of a tug at Arthur's tattoo, but nothing else. Gwaine was right after him, giving a last, dramatic flourish by thumbing out the gun clip, ejecting the bullet in the chamber, and thoroughly disassembling the weapon into as many pieces as he could without tools.

And, because it was Gwaine, it was a _lot_ of pieces. He tossed the parts in a scattered throw around the garden and finished off with a sharp, rude salute before turning around and walking through the gate, whistling.

Perceval kicked at the gate, loosening the stone he'd wedged in the hinge, and the gate swung shut.

Bryn's expression was priceless. His jaw was slack, his eyes were more white than pupil, and his mouth was wrapped midway through a stunned _what the fuck_. He scanned the group, trying to find whoever had broken the wards, fixing them each with a narrowed gaze. 

Arthur ignored him for now, giving Merlin his full attention, studying him, head to toe and back again, cataloguing everything that had changed since he'd seen him that morning. Besides the bruise on his cheek and his cut lip -- both of which made Arthur's chest twinge at the sight -- there were fresh bruises on his arm, already black and purple where someone had grabbed him hard. His shirt was torn, there were scratches on his neck, and somehow, he looked seven shades of _pissed off_ while still managing to look subdued, contrite, and apologetic as he approached, tail between his legs.

Like a good dog to his pack leader.

And, worse, Merlin even managed to tear up, his voice trembling when he spoke. "I'm sorry, I -- I fought them, I tried to get home --"

Arthur tilted his head to the side, reaching out with his hand to touch Merlin's arm, sliding it up until he skimmed the edge of the newest bruise. He traced it out, taking his time. He fingered the edge of the torn shirt -- it was a pity, because he _really_ liked this shirt on Merlin, which meant he would need to get another one. And, finally, his hand drifted up to touch the scratches on his throat.

Arthur kept his expression as neutral as he could. 

Merlin shuddered under his touch, and he was trembling so much at some point that Arthur wasn't sure if it was the chill in the late afternoon air or the stress of what he'd just endured that had anything to do with it. Merlin wrenched his hand from his jeans pocket and wiped a tear from his cheek.

"Oh, Merlin," Arthur said softly, shaking his head. Merlin's eyes darted up and down, but it was enough for Arthur enough to see the fierce fight in Merlin's gaze. Arthur relaxed a little, reaching up to catch another tear before it streamed all the way down Merlin's cheek, reassured when Merlin pressed a kiss against his palm. "Get in the car."

Merlin nodded, but kept his eyes down. Arthur watched him until the door slammed shut and glanced at Bohrs, who clasped his hands together and stood at attention to guard the vehicle. 

Arthur turned toward the house. His men were still scattered, on alert, ready to react; there were two laser dots on Bryn's chest now. Will was against the doorframe, still, wiping a bloody hand on his jeans. Freya was pacing through the overgrown flowerbed like a predator. Inside the house, one bodyguard was groaning, the other was nowhere to be seen, and there was no sign of the man that Kay had photographed going in.

Arthur tilted his head, shaking it as he walked across the street slowly, considering. He stood right outside the gate -- he could _feel_ the magic, suddenly, pulling and cloying at him with whispers and promises of safety and security, teasing him with _you want to stay_. That was all; only a sensation of intent, but no pushing, no pressing need; there was a pulse of warmth through him from the tattoo on his side that gave him the confidence to put his hands on the gates and to lean forward, unconcerned.

Finally, he waved a hand at Bryn, gesturing for him to step forward.

The two points of red laser light didn't waver as Bryn walked close, looking all the more bewildered by the liberties that Arthur was taking while escaping the effect of the wards. They stared at each other for a long moment, and it was Arthur who broke the silence.

"You hurt him." Arthur's own voice terrified him to hear it.

"A -- A misunderstanding, that's all," Bryn said hastily. "We were trying to protect him from himself."

"I see," Arthur said. "Is that what Merlin will tell me when I ask him?"

Bryn's face flushed dark, turning pale a heartbeat later. His mouth fell open, but no words came out. Arthur let him stew in silence for a few minutes before relaxing his expression and smirking.

"He's excitable, isn't he?" Arthur said. At the confused sound escaping Bryn's mouth, Arthur continued, "Merlin. He likes particular things. He _needs_ things a certain way. He's not happy otherwise. But you went to school with him, once upon a time. Surely you knew that."

"I -- I did," Bryn said, swallowing heavily. 

"Right." Arthur snorted and wriggled a finger, inviting Bryn closer. Bryn took an involuntary step forward. "Let's see if you understand basic math. When Merlin gets upset, _I_ get upset. When I'm upset, I am much less likely to be charitable."

Arthur gestured at the red lights on Bryn's chest, waving his fingers over the lights as if brushing away lint. Bryn glanced down and licked his lips, doing his best not to give himself away, but a blind man could see the nerves glowing off of him from a mile away.

"Our meeting Friday night?" Arthur said, rather than asked. "Don't call me."

Arthur lingered long enough to glance past Bryn at Freya, then at the house.

"Nice place you've got here. Three bedrooms, isn't it? Two and a half baths. Still renovating the kitchen, aren't you? Better get on that. The market will be soft, soon, and you won't be able to relocate as quickly as you should." Arthur gave Bryn a mocking wink before turning away. He walked to the car, waving a hand over his shoulder in farewell.


	2. Chapter 2

**ooOOoo**

"You couldn't have had better timing. Five more minutes of listening to the NWO recruitment spiel, and I swear I would've started killing people," Merlin said, rubbing the sides of his head in a vain attempt to scrub everything he had to listen to while in Bryn's company.

The new bloke had shown up about an hour after Merlin and Will had arrived, but once he was there, they were treated to a tag team marathon session explaining the mission statement of the NWO and lauding the good work they'd done thus far.

When Will had asked what sort of work they'd done, the subject of conversation had been subtly changed to something innocent and innocuous. After the third or fourth dodge, Will had snorted, rolled his eyes, and said, "You should come clean now, because I'm _really bloody bored_." That had been the point where Bryn had gracefully -- what amounted as graceful for him, anyway -- sidestepped the question by saying, "We'll get into that later."

It had taken the entire drive to the flat -- complete with long detours and tail-shakes that were probably not strictly necessary -- for Merlin to finish reciting everything that he remembered from the last few hours. His throat was dry from all the talking, and he was glad that he was using the recorder function on his cell phone -- all he would need to do now was encrypt the file and forward it on to Bayard's people to transcribe.

"So they're keen on getting you both," Gwaine said from the front seat.

"More than," Merlin said. "They want Will because of his connections in the army and his background. They want me because..."

He waved a hand in the air. Right now he couldn't quite voice the reason why -- it was a little beyond him at the moment. 

"Because you're a bloody genius," Gwaine said.

"Because I'm Pagan, more like," Merlin said, and he could have laughed himself to tears at the thought. If there was ever a more ill-suited label for who and what he was, it was _Pagan_. He respected the customs, but he was hardly devout in the practices, and really, even if he'd rather sit around a bonfire at night than relax on a comfortable couch in front of the telly, that didn't mean much. "Even though, I'm not. Not really. They want people who know and understand the way things used to be in the Way Back When and who could happily live without modern technology."

"Sounds like they're starting a commune," Perceval said thoughtfully. "A bunch of converts, a couple of gun caches, a big bowl of poisoned punch. Wouldn't be the first time something like that happened."

"If it were that, then what would the Directory need us for?" Gwaine asked, twisting his upper body to drape an arm over his seat, looking at Merlin and Arthur.

Arthur was sitting close to Merlin, his hand occasionally reaching out to sweep down Merlin's back in reassurance, but otherwise, he hadn't said much while Merlin went through his debrief.

"The way they were talking, they're meaning for it to be a global thing." Merlin leaned back against the leather seats, his leg brushing against Arthur's, and stared at the ceiling of the car.

No one spoke, but Merlin could hear the question that none of them asked out loud: _How are they going to make it a global thing?_

The answer that Merlin didn't want to think about was _magic_.

"I don't know how they're going to do it," Merlin said. "I don't think they're going to tell me. I don't even think Bryn and Freya even know for sure, and it's like what that Pietr bloke at the Directory said -- the lower down the totem pole you are, the less you know but the more scut work you end up doing."

"Cannon fodder," Perceval said.

"Yeah, something like, if not exactly like," Merlin said. "According to this bloke, Will and me, if we're in, if any of us come in on this, we're entry-level. When they tell us to jump, we don't even get to ask _how high_. We jump or we die. We want to advance? Get some power and influence? We get ourselves noticed. Otherwise, we might as well be a Red Shirt wandering blind on a battlefield."

Merlin's inner nerd was showing, but he knew that his Star Trek reference to the member of the Away team who always got killed within the first few minutes of landing on a strange alien planet hadn't been missed.

"Well," Arthur said, finally speaking, "If nothing else, we've gotten ourselves noticed."

"No shite," Merlin said. He shot Arthur a dark look. They'd had a short, thirty-second argument about the rescue -- 

_"You pillock, what were you thinking? You_ figured out _that the place was warded, and you sent them in after me anyway?"_

 _"You're welcome,_ Mer _lin," Arthur had said._

\-- and Merlin had pursed his lips, half-pleased that the team had been smart enough to work their way around the magic on their own, even going so far as to figure out what would work and what wouldn't, half-disappointed when it turned out that they didn't need Merlin to get them out of there in the first place.

_"What would you have done, anyway?" Gwaine had asked._

Plucked the threads of the wards, for one thing, to which Arthur had pointed out, _"And out yourself as a sorcerer? Brilliant, Merlin."_

_"The ward was in sorry shape. They won't wonder how I got out," Merlin had said._

_"But they'll wonder how we_ all _got out," Perceval had said._

And that was the end of that. While Merlin might have badly wished to have seen the look on Bryn's face when they filed out without so much as his by-your-leave, he couldn't help the way his hands balled into fists to keep from scratching at his jeans in anxiety. There was no way that Bryn -- no way that _any_ of them, except Will, who didn't have a clue about the wards because Merlin hadn't been able to warn him -- could know how the team had walked out of there unhindered, but they would want to know now.

Merlin wondered what Arthur was planning, and knew that the team wouldn't hear about it until Arthur had considered every variable that he could possibly consider before seeking out external input.

"Thought I'd shite my briefs when you told him to go sod himself for that meeting Friday," Gwaine said, looking hard at Arthur. 

"You did what?" Merlin asked, turning to Arthur.

"Thought to myself, _well, that's one way of flushing the mission down the loo_ , as if this thing with Will getting pulled in weren't already going to give us trouble," Gwaine said. He tapped his forehead in mock salute. "But now I am starting to see your cunning plan."

"There's no plan," Arthur said.

Gwaine's eyebrows shot up. "No plan?"

"None whatsoever," Arthur confirmed.

"Bollocks," Perceval said, glancing at them in the rear-view mirror. Merlin twisted in his seat, crossed his legs under him on the seat, and looked hard at Arthur in the hopes that it would be enough to draw answers out of him without having to resort to rusty pliers and a dentist's chair.

Arthur shrugged and held up a finger -- Merlin immediately recognized the makings of one of Arthur's famous _lists_ and glanced over to see Gwaine groan. "They tried to take Merlin from us; they know now that it's not going to work again on a lot of levels. We'll get him back and, even then, Merlin won't cooperate with them because he doesn't want to stay."

"That was a nice one, Merlin. Best tantrum I've ever seen. You must have been a terror for your mum," Gwaine said.

"Not really," Merlin said. "Mum terrified _me_."

Arthur held up a second finger. "He pissed in his water bowl when he went against me to get Merlin -- however it is that he went about it. There was no way I was going to leave him with a _that's all right, better luck next time_ pat on his head and let him think we're still friends."

"Your way or the highway," Merlin said. Arthur glanced at him, and his lips curled in a smirk.

"Exactly."

"So if he wants anything to do with us -- with Pendragon Consulting, with Merlin --" Perceval slowed down for a red light, and Arthur glanced around the way he did when he wasn't altogether comfortable with being in the open. "He's got to come to us, hat in hand."

Merlin glanced at Arthur. Arthur looked back.

"Essentially."

"And if he doesn't?" Perceval asked.

Arthur raised a third finger, and dropped his hand. "He'll call. Whatever defences Bryn thought he had against us -- against anyone -- he's going to check and see they're intact --"

"They are, aren't they? Our necklaces didn't do anything?" Gwaine asked.

"As far as I could tell the ward's intact. Falling apart a bit, though. It's old, and it's fraying, but not enough to account for us getting out," Merlin said.

Arthur nodded, as if he assumed as much. Merlin had to give him credit. The team had paid attention during their "classes" at the Directory compound, but Arthur, more than anyone else, had worked hard to _understand_ what he was being taught. Merlin didn't know if it was a side effect of their relationship or if it had to do with Arthur's innate need to have every detail so that he can put together a better plan, but either way, it warmed Merlin to know that Arthur had made that effort.

"Once Bryn realizes that, he's going to think, _shite, why didn't that work_ , and he's going to wonder what we did. We got out of his clutches _somehow_ \--"

"Probably thinks one of us has magic," Gwaine said.

Arthur hesitated, as if he'd thought of that, too, and didn't like it. "That's a possibility. If it comes up, we'll have to convince them that none of us are magic, and that we've done our research and that we got our hands on magical artefacts. Merlin --"

Perceval braked hard to avoid a car swerving into their lane, and Merlin scrambled to keep from sliding off the seat. Arthur caught him before he ended up awkwardly between the seats. Arthur's hand was warm on his arm -- Merlin was still chilled from an afternoon spent in Bryn's house. The heaters were on full blast, but Merlin wasn't feeling any more comfortable, though it helped that he was no longer stuck in a room with people harping at him about leaving Arthur (ridiculous!) or getting indoctrinated further into the NWO mindset.

"-- seat belt," Perceval suggested.

"Right," Merlin said. He buckled up and nodded at Arthur to continue. "What were you saying?"

"Is there any way for them to find out about the pendants?"

Merlin winced slightly. "Well, yeah. If they're looking for it, they can sense the magic in them, and figure out what it's for."

"Can they track it back to the person who cast it?"

"I'm not sure," Merlin said, unconsciously biting his lip and wincing when his tooth caught the cut. Luckily, it didn't start bleeding again, but he caught a glimpse of the concern in Arthur's eyes. "I don't think so. It's a small enough spell that Kathy wouldn't have put anything of herself in it. The bigger spells definitely have a signature. Wait. Let me check. Gwaine, give me your pendant."

Gwaine handed it over his shoulder. 

Kathy's magic tingled through Gwaine's skull and crossbones, tickling Merlin's palm. He tried to follow the faintest tendril to a source, but the magic was self-sustaining, curling back onto itself. Even a flash of magic to nudge it in any particular direction boomeranged back at the pendant.

When Merlin looked up again, it was to catch Arthur staring at him with a small smile, the same small smile he wore whenever Merlin's eyes flashed gold. "Um. No. Kathy's safe, I can't track it, and if I can't --"

"Maybe someone else can?" Gwaine asked, putting the necklace back on. 

"Maybe," Merlin said, "But I doubt it. Let's not leave them lying around for them to try, then, yeah?"

"Good idea," Gwaine said.

Arthur nodded. "All right. Next time we meet with them, we'll carry our pendants. Maybe not wear them outright, but at least have them on us, so they get the impression that we know more about the NWO than we should."

"So you do have a plan," Gwaine said, exultant. "I knew it."

"It's not really a plan. It's waiting to see what they'll do next. It's in their hands now," Arthur said.

"What if they don't do anything?" Perceval asked, pulling into the flat's driveway. The engine idled while they waited; it wasn't long before Kay and Bohrs parked next to them, having come from another direction. The two of them went on ahead to check the house.

"They will," Arthur said.

"What makes you so sure?"

Arthur pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, thumbed through the lockout, and scrolled through the applications. 

"This guy," Arthur said. He held the phone up long enough for Gwaine to see the screen before handing it to Merlin. A photograph filled the screen; it was the picture of the bloke who'd given Merlin and Will their first indoctrination lecture. 

"Saw him inside," Gwaine said. "He didn't come out of the house."

"No," Arthur said. He took the phone from Merlin's fingers, and his voice was quiet when he asked, "Who is he, Merlin?"

Merlin rubbed his face. He could still hear the man's voice echoing in his head, as if he had some sort of power to insert subliminal messages in people's minds. "He's the one who did most of the talking. He said his name was Marius Aglain."

Kay picked that moment to come out of the house, scan the street, and gesture at them to come inside. Merlin knew from the look on Arthur's face that there would be more questions, and that he had to answer them as accurately as possible. He already knew what Arthur was thinking -- Merlin hadn't even known who the man was until he introduced himself and started talking.

His NWO recruitment speech had been far more sophisticated than Bryn's, than Freya's. It wasn't that he had been at it for a while -- no, Merlin would have expected an active recruiter to be far more aggressive, like an used car salesman eager to clear his lot for new merchandise, taking advantage of a prospect's insecurities and uncertainties to press the key points of his spiel. His language had been more posh than Bryn's jailhouse crude, his mannerisms more relaxed and accepting, and instead of coming in for the attack at any moment of weakness the way Bryn had done, he waited for them to ask questions.

A snake-oil merchant had nothing on this man.

It wasn't until they were inside that Arthur asked Bohrs, "Clear?"

Bohrs held up a finger. He wandered around the open area slowly, his eyes fixed to the device in his hand. Merlin stood by, impatiently, until Bohrs confirmed, "All clear."

No bugs. No chance of being eavesdropped.

"Go on. Marius Aglain."

"Definitely NWO," Merlin said, heading into the kitchen. He'd refused to eat or drink anything that Freya had put out for them in an obvious attempt to soften him up. Will had gleefully helped himself to handfuls of crisps and sweet cakes and poured more than one bottle of beer down his . 

Merlin opened a package of cold cuts and stuffed a couple in his mouth. At Arthur's raised brow, he said, "What? I'm starving."

"Didn't they feed you?" Kay asked.

"Do I look stupid enough to eat anything they might've _drugged_?" Merlin snapped. He stared down at his food and felt sick. "Shite. I can't believe I left Will back there."

"He'll be fine," Arthur said, his voice calm, neutral, reassuring. "He's been trained."

Logically, Merlin knew that, but he couldn't help blurting out, "But how well?"

Arthur grit his teeth, his expression tight, and he exhaled slowly. "If he needs an extraction, he knows what to do. If the Directory's backup plans fail --"

And they would, if the near-disaster in Paris was any indication. Merlin didn't say that out loud. He knew they were all thinking the same thing.

"-- he's still got us as a backup plan. You reprogrammed his phone, yeah?" At Merlin's nod, Arthur said, "For now, have faith in him."

Merlin lowered his eyes and nodded again, this time with difficulty. His stomach was in knots. His hands trembled. He'd left Will behind. With Freya, who was a monster even on her best day, despite everything she tried to keep herself under control. With Bryn, who would happily slice someone's throat if it suited him. With a complete stranger -- a stranger who might be able to do _anything_.

His only reassurance that Will would have a chance was knowing that he'd managed to warn Will about Freya, that Will had always been able to handle himself where Bryn was concerned, but he had no idea what Aglain could do. What he _would_ do.

"Merlin. I need you to do three things," Arthur said, still quiet, steady, calm. Ever the Captain, he was forcing Merlin to focus on his voice. Merlin smiled wanly.

"Yeah?"

"We weren't briefed on Aglain, so that either means that the Directory isn't aware of him or kept him out of our briefing notes. Let's err on the side of caution. We need to make the Directory aware of Marius Aglain. Send them the photograph and sum up what happened."

"Okay," Merlin said, taking the phone from Arthur. He forwarded the phone to his computer where he could be sure of a more secure encryption. "What else?"

"Stop eating. We're going to dinner," Arthur said.

Merlin glanced up sharply. "We are?"

"We are," Arthur said. Merlin looked on mournfully as the cold cuts were packed up and replaced in the refrigerator, but he didn't move toward the computer to take care of the first item on Arthur's list until he felt Arthur's sharp elbow to his ribs.

Writing up the summary took the longest. Arthur was behind him the entire time, reminding him to add a few details, falling silent when Merlin described Aglain's attitude and demeanour. It was a matter of minutes for him to upload the recording he'd made in the car when he told Arthur everything that happened, to push the photograph and the briefing through the encryption routine, to send it off, and to secure his laptop again, destroying the evidence that anything had ever been sent at all.

Merlin turned in his seat. "So. Dinner?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Gwaine and Perceval had changed clothes. They were wearing suits. 

All sorts of alarm bells rang in his head.

The snap of Arthur's fingers in front of his eyes caught his attention. "What's with the suits?"

"That's the third thing I need you to do," Arthur said, and Merlin noted the grimace. "I need you to get dressed."

"I am dressed," Merlin said, and he saw Arthur's eyes drift down to the tear in his shirt. "I'll change shirts."

"In a _suit_ , Merlin," Arthur said. "We're meeting Cenred King."

Merlin stared at Arthur. Arthur stared back. "Oh. So this isn't a date?"

Gwaine and Perceval choose that moment to move out of earshot. Kay was even smarter and took himself out of the line of fire entirely. Bohrs, oblivious, had his head in the refrigerator.

"Believe me, I wish it were," Arthur said. He sounded so regretful that Merlin huffed, but couldn't find it in himself to be upset. It was starting to look as if they were going to have to wait until this whole bloody mission was over before they had some time to themselves, and Merlin was already resigning himself to a long wait.

The tone of Arthur's voice made it a little easier to bear, and only because there was something else in Arthur's voice that made Merlin wonder what else was going on.

"I missed something today, didn't I?"

"I'll tell you while you change," Arthur said, stepping out of the way, gesturing for Merlin to get upstairs and to hurry.

Merlin went up to their bedroom and headed for the walk-in closet while Arthur shut the door behind them. He flicked through the clothes -- he didn't have many, and most of the better-quality items were issued by the Directory in anticipation of the mission in Algiers before selecting a dark suit that would offset Arthur's. Merlin had barely stripped out of his clothes before he heard Arthur's voice.

"My father is aware that I'm investigating the missing firearms," Arthur said. "Not that it should surprise him, considering Morgana's involved. He doesn't know about Morgause, but he knows that the other companies are being hit too."

"But?" Merlin glanced over his shoulder. Arthur was leaning against the doorframe, one ankle crossed over the other, his hands in his pockets. His eyes were down, his brow pinched in thought, and he was unconsciously sucking his cheeks in a way that had _no business_ looking as sexy as it did.

"He's not concerned," Arthur said after a long silence. "He's more worried about King's people sniffing around one of our R&D divisions in France."

Merlin pulled on his trousers, buttoning and zipping up. He'd shrugged into the off-white shirt that one of the Directory "stylists" had selected for him. It was just a little too tight at the shoulders, but it hugged the rest of him like a second skin with uncooperative buttons. He left it open at the throat. Merlin watched Arthur for a long time before prompting, "Should I ask what's out there, or is that company confidential?"

Arthur scratched his chin, his eyes darting up suddenly. "Sorry. I was thinking. We have a chemical lab out there. It's where we develop new materials. Lightweight but dense armour for tanks, spider silk with a flexible titanium-molybdenum core for reinforced Kevlar, deflective paint for camouflage, stealth compounds."

Merlin raised a brow. "Okay. And what's this got to do with us meeting Cenred? Wait. What does this have to do with _me_ coming with you to meet him?"

"King has been calling my father for an appointment. Persistently. The Colonel wants to take advantage of my cover to see if I can pull any information out of King, and had his secretary pass any calls from King on to me," Arthur said. Abruptly, he waved a hand in the air. "Don't bother with a tie."

Merlin's fingers hovered a few centimetres from the tie rack. Arthur had promptly looked over the ties that the Directory had sent along with Merlin's temporary wardrobe, declared them all an affront against good taste, and tossed them all in the bin. The tie he had been reaching for was one of Arthur's silver-black silks. "But --" 

"No tie," Arthur said again, his voice low and dangerous, and Merlin realized that Arthur's eyes were fixed at his open shirt. A flush of heat ran through him, and Merlin dropped his hand.

"No tie," Merlin said. He put on his coat, adjusting the collar. "So, why me?"

"King wants you there. Is there any reason why he'd want you there?"

"Not that I know of," Merlin said. "Other than his company trying to recruit me out of uni, but you knew that."

"You've never met him before?"

"No," Merlin said. He frowned. "Well, other than spotting him in Paris."

Arthur took a step closer. 

"I suppose we'll find out," Merlin said. There was a predatory stalk to Arthur's walk, and Merlin tried to keep from smiling.

"We will," Arthur said, cupping Merlin's cheek. "Are you all right? Everything today -- Freya and Bryn and Will? That was a bit much."

"I'm fine," Merlin said. "I still wish Will weren't involved."

"So do I," Arthur said. His fingers drifted to the back of Merlin's head, but he didn't push or pull or force, and the gesture, tender and gentle, sent shivers down Merlin's spine. It was Arthur who came closer, who leaned in, who pressed soft lips in a chaste, tender kiss.

Tension that Merlin didn't know he had trickled down his body like the water from a rainstorm, threatening to wash Merlin along with it. He put a hand on Arthur's hip to steady himself, and the heat of Arthur's body seeped through him, cracking through the icy chill that he hadn't been able to shake since stepping into Bryn's house.

There was a small pause, an indrawn take of air, another kiss, slow and gentle, pressing questions of _are you sure_ and assurances of _won't let them hurt you_.

Arthur's arm slid around Merlin's waist, his hand settling at the small of his back. Merlin wasn't sure who crossed the last few millimetres, but he could feel the steady pounding of Arthur's heart against his chest.

Arthur pushed kisses against his cheek, along the line of his jaw, and he whispered in Merlin's ear, "Drove myself mad, worrying about you."

Merlin smiled. "You did?"

"I did," Arthur said, kissing him again.

Merlin rested his head in the muscle between Arthur's neck and shoulder, lifting his chin a little to press a kiss under his ear. He let his hand trail up Arthur's side until his fingers were right over Arthur's tattoo. He knew he was in the right spot -- just like he would always know that he was in the right spot -- from the way Arthur's breath hitched, the way his fingers tingled to touch the magic that bound them together.

 _That bound them together._ A small shiver ran down his spine. "You'll never need to."

"I will anyway," Arthur said. 

Merlin didn't know how long they stood like that, close, sharing warmth, sharing air, and he didn't care because it was a moment where things felt as if everything was all right. As if everything would be all right. The sensation broke when Arthur heaved a soft sigh and said, "We should go."

"It's just Cenred," Merlin said. "Plus, if you're being a prat --"

Arthur snorted faintly.

"-- you're supposed to be late anyway."

"We're already late," Arthur said, though to Merlin's ear, he didn't sound all that concerned. "By the time we get to the restaurant, I figure, he'll have been cooling his heels for twenty minutes."

Merlin pulled his head away from Arthur, just enough to look at him. "Nice. Exactly the right amount to make him think he's being stood up. This is starting to feel more like a weird kind of date than a meeting."

Arthur smirked. His arms dropped from around Merlin, but his fingers brushed the back of Merlin's hands. "You look good."

"You always look good," Merlin said, and Arthur's smirk turned into a smug smile. "Don't let it go to your head."

"It's entirely possible that your warning comes too late," Arthur said, pulling Merlin out of the walk-in closet with a fingertip looped around Merlin's index finger. Merlin shook off Arthur's hand to do something about his hair. He spent a minute carefully styling his hair before turning around only to find Arthur standing right in front of him.

"I'm ready," Merlin said.

"Not quite yet," Arthur said, brushing his hands through Merlin's hair. "I've told you before. Leave your hair alone."

Merlin swatted at him and checked out his reflection. "Bloody hell, Arthur. I look like I've just been shagged."

"Exactly," Arthur said, grinning. He walked to the door, stopping with a hand on the doorknob. He turned around, his eyes on the floor, his face twisting in every expression from thoughtful to reluctant to guilty, and there was something close to apology in the way he almost winced before he spoke again. "There's something else."

"Should I worry?" Merlin picked up his watch from the dresser, running his thumb over it before deciding at the last minute to put it on. He grabbed his wallet, too, thinking about the money that was still in his jeans pocket. Now that he actually survived the day, Merlin realized that Arthur had probably meant for him to use the cash to grab a cab back to the flat if he'd needed to get away. His phone went in another pocket.

"Do you remember the weapons demonstration? In the early days, when you were first assigned to us? When we went against Valiant's team?"

Merlin frowned. Arthur was talking about the war games. "Yeah, I remember. What about it?"

"After the smoke cleared, once The Colonel realized just how much damage you'd done to the company's reputation after you cracked the radio," Arthur said.

A quirk of a smirk tugged at Merlin's lips. "Yeah, I figured as much. I mean, it's kind of obvious. He looked like he'd have been happy to smite me right then and there. Kind of half-expected him to pull a Zeus and zap me with lightning bolts or something."

Arthur half-chuckled. "Yeah. He did look pretty pissed. I'm surprised that he didn't have a meltdown on the tarmac before he left."

"Prone to those, isn't he?" Merlin asked, even though he knew the answer. He'd heard the stories. Uther Pendragon wasn't known for temper tantrums -- quite the opposite. When he was angry, a Little Ice Age crept over the region and didn't melt until people fixed whatever it was that had made him upset in the first place. Whether it was a malfunctioning piece of equipment or a botched business deal, or, worse, a failed capture of an area during battle manoeuvres -- Uther's face very rarely cracked into more than an approving nod. Arthur could fall in a similar mood when things didn't go right, but fortunately, they didn't last as long, and they weren't as painful to endure.

"Sometimes," Arthur said. He held his breath, and, to Merlin, it looked very much as if he were trying to come up with the right words for whatever he was trying to say.

"Plus, there was that other thing," Merlin said, tilting his head. There was one reason why he'd figured that Uther had been angry with Merlin. He almost regretted even mentioning it.

"What other thing?"

"Well." Merlin shrugged his shoulders, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets, uncomfortable all of a sudden. "It's really dumb, if we're being honest."

"Only if you don't start talking," Arthur said, frowning, his earlier uncertainty gone, or at least postponed for the moment.

Merlin didn't say anything for the longest time. When he finally spoke, it was with an effacing shrug and a waterfall of words and an embarrassing amount of stammering that revealed just how hurt he was about the whole thing. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just. You didn't think I wouldn't notice that everyone on the team but me have guaranteed jobs at Pendragon when their tours are up. Well. Except for Lance, but that's because he's something of a bleeding heart, always ready with plasters if one of us gets in a scrape. I didn't really know that until after the war games. I don't know if I would've done anything different if I'd known, and, well, I figured I burned my chances with Uther when I wrecked his precious radio, but, still, kind of stings a little --"

"Merlin." Arthur looked a little pale. He took a steadying breath before continuing. "He asked me to recruit you for the company."

Merlin gave him a sharp look. There was something of a grimace in Arthur's expression now. "What? When?"

"When I walked him to the heli. That day."

Merlin stared at him some more. "You never said."

"No. I --" Arthur stopped himself and tried again. "Morgana told me about you. Back then, I mean. She found out about all the offers you got even before you were out of uni. I figured that if you turned them down for the army, that you meant to be a lifer, but when I finally heard otherwise, well. It just never came up."

Merlin was too numb to say anything except to repeat a flat, "It never came up."

Arthur raised a hand and scratched the back of his head, looking embarrassed. "Every time it did, I wasn't thinking about sitting you down for a job interview or offering you a position with the company."

"What were you thinking about, then? You didn't want me working for you or something? Did you think I'd be completely useless --"

"For God's sake, _Mer_ lin," Arthur said, a quality to his voice that pleaded for anything _but_ having to make any sort of confession. "I tried to ask you. Every time we sat down at the canteen, had the table to ourselves, no one else around in the barracks, or were out in the field and _for once_ weren't ducking bullets every five seconds. I couldn't get it in my head, all right? I couldn't make myself offer you a job at Pendragon."

"Why not? Just tell me, Arthur --"

"It was bad enough that I couldn't _shag you senseless_ every bloody time you looked at me and smiled. We were in the army! I was -- I still am -- your superior officer. Do you really think it would be any better if I were your _boss_?"

"What about Morgana and Leon?" Merlin asked.

Arthur frowned. "What about them?"

"They're both working for Pendragon. Morgana's the VP of --"

"No. That's different."

"She's not his boss --"

Merlin made a soft sound of disbelief. The bitterness that Merlin felt at being left out from this other thing, this awareness that once the team's tours were up he would be left behind, never to see them again, it didn't exactly evaporate as leave him paralyzed with disbelief and anger. The elusive offer of employment, the fear that he was never going to be one of the group, that he was only a temporary member of the team after all, the niggling doubts and the dull ache of feeling as if he didn't really belong despite everything that they'd gone through...

And _this_ was the reason that Merlin had been burning in his own quiet hell all along?

He supposed it made a perverse sort of sense. If Arthur had been adamant that they wait, that they didn't act on their feelings for each other until they were out of the army -- or at least free and clear from the rules and regulations -- then, of course, he'd want to make certain that they wouldn't be breaking any company policy. With Uther Pendragon a former British Army Colonel, it made sense that he might go as far as adopting the same anti-fraternization rules.

Which made no sense if one knew about Morgana and Leon. Surely their ongoing affair wouldn't be permitted under the Pendragon blanket, now, would it? Then again, Morgana never struck Merlin as being particularly good at following the rules. Also, when it came to Morgana, Leon was the sort more inclined to make her happy than to worry about getting fired. If anything, Leon would probably hand in his resignation the minute their relationship became an issue.

Hell, Merlin would, too. He felt hurt that Arthur wouldn't at least talk to him about it, to make the decision on his own.

The silence stretched.

"Well. Say something," Arthur said, his voice small and unsure.

The silence stretched some more.

"Merlin?"

"You're an idiot," Merlin said finally, his voice thick. "You're a stupid, noble, ridiculous idiot with a warped sense of honour and propriety and you should've been born in the Middle Ages -- no, the _Dark Ages_ \-- if you have this much of a issue having a relationship with me just because of a bunch of _rules_. No, never mind that -- if you can't even _tell_ me about the stupid job offer in the first place because you're worried that it would split us up even before we even got together, you have a huge problem --"

Arthur looked pained and chastened, but Merlin couldn't shut up.

"-- or rather, _we_ have a huge problem. I mean, after everything, you don't trust me? You think that I'd take the job and break up with you? Or that I'd take the job and we'd be forced to break up anyway? Do you have so little faith in me, in _us_ that you didn't consider that I'd rather take the job if I could take it with the condition that I can still go home with my boss? Or I'd find something else in a non-competing business so that we could still be together? Jesus, Arthur. I mean, really. I know we haven't talked about what we'd do _afters_ , and maybe we _should_ have that talk, and we will, damn you, but don't cut me out of the decision-making where _we're_ involved, because I'm in this too --"

That seemed to be everything that Arthur wanted to hear, because he breathed out a little, shaky gasp of relief that he looked surprised to hear himself make. His hand slipped from the doorknob and he took an uneasy step toward Merlin, then another, pausing with an uncertainty so severe that Merlin would have laughed and teased him about before asking him if someone had slipped him a mickey, because it wasn't like him at all to be so out of sorts. 

"-- and I'm not walking out on us, on _this_ , when we're done the mission, Arthur, and if you even think for one second that a _job offer_ is going to change that --"

"And if King offers you a job?"

Merlin stopped talking, his words stumbling to an abrupt halt. He threw up his hands in the air and took three steps away from Arthur before turning around. "Seriously? After everything I've said, you're worried about --"

"If King offers you a job, we can't --"

"You've got an eidetic memory, Arthur Pendragon," Merlin said, grounding out the words. "Rewind everything I've just said and try to remember the part where I said I'll _find a job in a non-competing business so that we can still be together_ \--"

Merlin trailed off. This was sounding altogether too familiar, like every other time Arthur told him one thing to get him to do something else. They had a similar conversation that morning, right before Arthur slapped him and refused to tell Merlin what Bayard had told him over the phone.

"This is one of your things, isn't it?"

Arthur frowned faintly. "What things?"

"The things where you're pulling reverse psychology on me." Merlin's eyes narrowed, trying to decide if Arthur genuinely had hang-ups about following the rules -- which he already knew was true -- or if there was something else behind it. Or rather, in addition to. 

"I don't do --"

"You're not trying to con me into accepting an offer with Cenred just because your dad's got his knickers in a bunch over some industrial espionage?" Merlin blurted out. 

Arthur's eyes went wide. "No --"

A horrified thought occurred to Merlin. "Are you trying to get rid of me? I mean, first you pretty much wrap me up with a pretty bow and send me over to Freya's with Will, and now this?"

"No, Merlin!" Arthur said, grabbing his arms. The strength of his grip was strong and drew a surprised sound from Merlin; in the next instant, Arthur pulled away, looking pale. "Merlin. No. Absolutely not. That's not what I'm --"

"Is it another of your games, then? Get me pissed off, make as if the two of us have had a fight, just to have it look good for Cenred?" Arthur didn't answer right away, and for a moment there, Merlin was mortified by the thought that Arthur actually looked as if he were _considering_ that, as if he hadn't come up with it before. Arthur shook his head and started to speak, but Merlin breathed a scoffing laugh, cutting him off before he could say anything. "Well, _congratulations_ , then, because if I weren't pissed off by the whole Freya and Bryn and Will thing, I'm sure as shite pissed off _now_."

Merlin crossed his arms over his chest. He could feel the pull of the too-tight shirt across his shoulders, the way the collar of his dinner jacket rubbed at the nape of his neck, but it was a poor distraction for the anger that was boiling under the surface. Merlin had been willing to _wait_. To put up with the mission, with their covers. To be absurdly close to Arthur -- in a way that it made butterflies squirm in his belly every time Arthur wrapped his arm around Merlin's waist in the dead of night, pulling him closer. To let their relationship grow in the brief snatches of time that they were able to get for themselves, but here was Arthur, being a bloody idiot _all over again_.

He didn't miss the way that Arthur was torturing himself, the way he was trying to come up with the right thing to say, the way he opened his mouth to say something, only not having the breath to speak the words out loud.

"Merlin," Arthur managed to say, and there was the undertone of _I'm sorry_ and _you're right_ that Arthur could never admit to anyone, much less to himself.

Merlin dropped his arms and sighed heavily, his eyes trailing up to the ceiling, begging the beneficence of all the spirits and gods that he'd ever celebrated at one of Uncle Gaius' feasts.

" _This_ ," Merlin said, gesturing with his index finger between the two of them, "This isn't a military operation. You can't plan for every contingency to make sure that we get married or something --"

Arthur's expression changed just enough for Merlin to stutter to silence.

"You are, aren't you? Planning... to..." Merlin caught himself, because Arthur glanced away, embarrassed, cheeks flushing, as if he had been caught doing something that he shouldn't have been doing, and now he'd never get to do it again. 

Merlin stared at Arthur for a long time. He tried to smile, to laugh it off, but it was there for him to see, plain as day. Arthur was serious. This was somewhere on one of his stupid lists, maybe on one of his five-year plans that he never shared with anyone. Arthur _was_ going to propose.

He swallowed hard. A different heartbeat pounded under his skin, out of rhythm with his own, until it soothed and matched his own. He felt the gauzy sensation of lingering dreams and could hear the whisper in his ear -- _now you are bound one to the other with a tie not easy to break_ \--

Merlin rubbed his face. He had to tell Arthur what he'd done. He didn't know how he was going to do that. His chest was tight, he couldn't breathe, and he was struggling to keep his mind from reeling. 

On the one hand, he couldn't help knowing that he'd made a mistake when he'd linked their tattoos together the way Arthur had asked and feeling guilty that he couldn't own up to it. On the other hand, it was damn near impossible to stop the stretch of his lips trying to slip into a big, broad grin.

_Arthur planned to propose._

Merlin chewed the inside of his cheek and closed his eyes tight. He opened his mouth to speak, to tell Arthur everything, but his mind was blank. 

He swallowed. Instead, he said, his voice hoarse, "Arthur. Just. Talk to me sometimes, yeah? Give us a chance. Please?"

"Yeah," Arthur said softly.

Merlin nodded and walked around Arthur, opening the bedroom door. "Come on. We're going to be late."

  
**ooOOoo**   


The drive to the restaurant was made in the most suffocating silence Arthur ever encountered. Considering that Uther was his father, that was saying a lot.

Gwaine and Perceval, picking up on the strained mood, spoke in quiet undertones when they spoke at all. The radio was off, and the only sound that came into the car were the muted honking horns and rumbling engines all around them.

Merlin sat on the other side of the rear passenger, as far away from Arthur as possible. He had made himself small as if not wanting to be seen, only to have the maddening opposite happen instead. Arthur had bollocksed up, and Merlin was making certain he knew it.

There was no missing the wall that had gone up between them, the unspoken _don't touch me, don't talk to me, don't even look at me right now_ that thickened the air. Merlin's arm was stretched on the armrest on the door, bent at the elbow, his teeth nibbling at his fingernails not in uncertainty but in thought. His eyes were distant and unfocused, his other hand on the seat next to him, fingers curled in a loose fist. His legs were sprawled, one raised knee up to rest against the door, the other stretched out under Perceval's seat.

If there was one relief for Arthur, it was that Merlin wasn't angry, not anymore, not like he was up in their bedroom when he realized that Arthur had been keeping something from him. It was something that might not have seemed very important to Arthur, but which Arthur now realized had been important to Merlin. Arthur had seen the betrayal in his eyes, the deep-seated hurt, the things that Merlin hadn't said, the accusations that he hadn't thrown into Arthur's face.

Arthur would have preferred that Merlin had let him have it. The cold silence was worse -- ten million times worse -- than the heated yelling and screaming that he well deserved. Arthur had grown up with Morgana -- he was _used_ to yelling and screaming. To heated words and hurtful words. To spite and disdain and expounded rage. Even if the icy shoulder was too much like his father's, this particular silence was something else altogether.

He was a hypocrite, he knew. Demanding that Merlin tell him, tell the team, all his secrets, while he kept secrets of his own. That he had a _reason_ for not telling Merlin about the job offer, that it was a _good_ reason that made perfect sense -- it was hardly justification. Merlin was right. He shouldn't have kept it from him. And he was right about that the other thing -- Arthur couldn't plan their relationship down to the slightest detail and not include him in the equation. 

He wished he'd kept his gob shut, that he hadn't mentioned anything at all, but he knew that it was inevitable, that Uther would want to meet Merlin again, and when he had that opportunity, Arthur knew Uther would ask Merlin if he'd given any consideration to a job offer he hadn't known about in the first place -- and _then_...

Arthur wondered if Merlin would have snapped and shown him the temper that was certain to lurk deep beneath the surface, or if Arthur would have been treated to something _worse_. He didn't want to think what that could be.

The car came to a stop. Perceval turned off the engine. There was an awkwardness -- the sort that came with tip-toeing on eggshells barefoot while wearing a coat made out of tiny bells -- before Gwaine delicately cleared his throat and said, "We're here."

Arthur didn't answer right away. He rubbed his eyes and took a steadying breath, trying to get his head into the role. It wasn't working, but he'd have to make do -- he didn't like King anyway, so that would help. "All right --"

Merlin dropped his arm from the door. "Guys. Give us a minute."

Arthur couldn't identify the tone in Merlin's voice, but Gwaine and Perceval scrambled out of the car as if ducking for cover from a grenade.

_Traitors._

He braced himself for what Merlin was going to tell him, for what Merlin was about to _do_ , his body going tense. When the two front doors clicked shut, Merlin's eyes glittered gold. Arthur held his breath, waiting for some sort of punishment, ready to suffer it, whatever it was, but there was nothing, nothing at all. Whatever Merlin had done --

Arthur glanced outside. Gwaine was frozen in place, not moving. The traffic on the busy road hadn't shifted despite the lack of roadblocks. He saw a bird in flight, suspended in the air.

They were frozen in time.

_Jesus._

He sat in awe of Merlin's power like he always did. Amazement and delight and thrill. He loved that Merlin had magic, that he could do these things, that these things were even possible.

He almost didn't catch what Merlin said.

"We are effectively married, you know," Merlin said.

Arthur's head snapped around to look at him. Merlin was staring straight ahead, his gaze fixed at a single point in space, a clench to his jaw, as if he was too angry to look at Arthur right now. Except --

It couldn't be anger. There had been such softness to Merlin's words.

"What?"

Merlin didn't answer right away. He pressed his lips together and frowned, contrite, abashed. "When you asked me to link the tattoos... I could have. I should have held off on it. Done some research to do it properly, you know? But it was easy, because the swords are identical, and they _wanted_ to be together, not just because the same person drew them on us, but because they're two sides of the same sword."

The swords on Merlin, on Arthur -- they were from the drawings that Arthur had done up, that he'd given the artist. But where his blade had tiny writing that read _One edge to defend_ , Merlin's read, _One edge to protect_.

"I was caught up in the moment. My magic. Well. It wanted to do it. It was tying us together nearly as soon as you said the words. All I had to do was let it go and it did all the work."

He fell silent then, and Arthur couldn't bring himself to speak. 

"Sometimes, when it's really quiet, like when it's late at night and I wake up and you're right next to me? I've got my head on your chest and I can hear your heartbeat, and I fall asleep again just listening to you, because it's the best sound in the world. It's not the only thing, though. Sometimes I can hear words, like someone singing, but it's so quiet, like a whisper. It's the most beautiful voice I've ever heard."

"What does it say?" Arthur asked. He winced, because his voice was too loud, too rough.

"You'll laugh," Merlin said. He chewed his lower lip, mindful of the cut in the corner. He raised his eyes to stare at the ceiling of the car and took a deep breath. " _Now you are bound one to the other with a tie not easy to break. Take the time of binding before the final vows are made to grow in wisdom and love. Know your bond will be ever strong, that your love will last in this life and beyond._ "

Merlin's voice was warm and soft, like velvet, and the words sent a chill down Arthur's spine.

He heard the echo of those words in his head, a feminine voice speaking in a soothing murmur, wishing safeguards and protection and other ethereal blessings. It was _right_ of them to be bound like this, Arthur knew, _had known it_ when he'd asked Merlin, but he knew it now more than ever. The certainty of it was suffocating, bringing stinging tears to his eyes.

When he could trust his voice to speak again, he asked, "What does it mean?"

Merlin's lips curled a little, absurdly, ridiculously _happy_ , but his eyes were hooded in apology. "I've heard it before. A dozen times, maybe more. All the ceremonies that Gaius presided over -- kind of hard not to know what they are."

He hesitated. Arthur could murder him; he was dying from waiting.

"It's a Pagan rite that has been passed down to us from hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago."

Arthur reached for Merlin's hand, relieved when he felt Merlin thread his fingers through his and squeeze. "A rite for what?"

"For a handfasting, Arthur," Merlin said with a soft sigh.

A betrothal. 

Arthur stared at Merlin, his mind whirling in circles, tripping over the word. 

Their relationship had hardly started on the right foot and had taken a ninety degree detour off the beaten track, hitting every bump on the journey thus far. Arthur's plans, however carefully organized, always fell through, and, somehow, they were still where Arthur wanted them to be. Maybe a few months earlier, maybe even a year ahead of where he'd wanted to be. 

It made him grin. He was engaged. He felt giddy, light-headed, drunk. A soft laugh escaped his lips. Merlin darted a confused glance in his direction.

"Let me get this straight," Arthur said, his voice a bit more gruff than he intended. He tugged Merlin toward him, reaching over to drag him over when Merlin wouldn't comply. "Your magic likes me so much that it decided to handfast us when I asked you to link us together?"

"Apparently," Merlin said dryly.

Arthur pulled Merlin even closer, and Merlin swatted at his hands in feeble protest. "So, technically, I still proposed?" 

"That's what you got out of all this?" Merlin asked, his tone indignant. "You totally missed the part back at the flat where you can't take over? That when it comes to the two of us, we've got to talk? That, maybe you planned us out all the way to us getting married, but that bollocks is just not going to work --"

"Yes, yes, I'm a stupid pillock, I've learned my lesson, I'll tell you _everything_ from now on, I can't promise that I'll stop planning everything down to the minute but I will try, and I know you'll call me on it when I do it again, that's why we're perfect together," Arthur said. "Now let's get back to the important part of the conversation. I proposed, and you said yes?"

Merlin squawked, but that could have been because Arthur dug his fingers in Merlin's sides, his thumb in Merlin's armpit.

"When were you going to tell me about _our engagement_ , Merlin?" Arthur dragged Merlin into his lap.

"It's not like we _are_ ," Merlin said. "You didn't really ask --"

"Close enough," Arthur said. He could live with it for now, already making plans to do a proper proposal later, when Merlin didn't expect it.

"We didn't have much of a choice! My magic --"

"Your magic is brilliant," Arthur said. Merlin's expression softened. "Smarter than both of us. I want everything to be perfect, but I'm just making it worse, aren't I? You want to go with the flow, except it's like we're in a bathtub and we're not going anywhere. Right?"

Merlin nodded.

Arthur brought Merlin's hand to his lips. "Problem solved. Well. Almost. I need to get you a ring."

"I'm stunned. You don't already have the ring." There was an amused smile on Merlin's lips that Arthur didn't hesitate to smother with a kiss. 

"You're right," Arthur said. "No ring. Not yet. That would give it away, and I don't think we should tell anyone for a while."

Merlin's eyes narrowed. "Are you being an arse again?"

"No, I'm looking out for my team," Arthur said. "If Morgana finds out that we're engaged before she is, she'll murder Leon."

"That would be bad," Merlin agreed. He favoured Arthur with a look that bordered on dark and evil, except Arthur was feeling particularly invulnerable right now, and nothing short of an atomic bomb blast could put a mark on his armour. "So you're not upset about this."

"'Course not. I had a plan for this, didn't I? It might be sooner than I'd have liked, and, well." Arthur made a gesture, but his hand came back to rest on Merlin's ribs, and he absentmindedly stroked the spot where Merlin's tattoo was. "I can't plan for everything, can I?"

"No," Merlin said softly. "That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"I do learn eventually," Arthur said. "It might take me a little while..."

"This doesn't change the fact you're a prat and I'm still mad at you."

"Will it help if I get you a big chocolate sundae?"

"Here?" Merlin asked, gesturing in the direction of the restaurant.

"Best chocolate sundaes in the world," Arthur promised. "Gooey and decadent. You'll get to drive me mad watching you lick a spoon in a posh setting."

"You can't buy me off," Merlin said, sliding from Arthur's lap. Merlin was grinning as if he thought that was a great idea, and Arthur knew he was in for it.

"No, but I can make it up to you. Starting Friday. British museum, just like I promised a while back, yeah?" Arthur took Merlin's hand and squeezed. Their original plan of meeting with Bryn and the other NWO agent, Tristan, was out the window thanks to Will's arrival, and unless things changed, they both had the day free. Or rather, Arthur would have the day free as soon as he called the office and told them that he wasn't coming in.

Merlin leaned in, tilting his head to that perfect angle, pressing their lips together in a sweet, soft kiss that did more to rob Arthur of breathe than a punch to the gut.

"Starting tonight," Merlin said meaningfully, and Arthur watched Merlin's eyes flash gold. The sight took his breath away. "Let's go inside."

Arthur pulled the handle and stepped out, waiting for Merlin.

Gwaine turned around immediately. "Shite. That weren't even a minute. Got yourselves sorted, then?"

Arthur schooled his expression into something unreadable, but it was difficult when all he wanted to do was grin like a loon. He ignored Gwaine's question and gestured toward the restaurant. "Go check the inside. Perce, you're with us."

Gwaine hurried on ahead while the three of them walked at a slow, leisurely pace. Merlin's fingers brushed against the back of Arthur's hand more than once, sending chills down Arthur's spine at the contact. Arthur cast a dark look in Merlin's direction that failed miserably when his eyes trailed down to Merlin's lips, bitten and raw, curled in a teasing smirk that hinted that he was thinking the same thing that Arthur was.

Notably, _sod this meeting, let's go back to the flat_.

They'd timed their walk perfectly. Gwaine darted out of the restaurant as soon as they arrived, capturing Arthur's arm and tugging him somewhere more private, shadowed from the streetlights and the cars and direct line of sight. "You're not going to like this."

"What is it?"

"That blond bird that took Morgana? What was her name, Morgause?" Gwaine glanced over Arthur's shoulder for confirmation from Perceval, even though he damn well knew Arthur could have given him the answer. "She's in there. With King. Looking really chummy, too, if you ask me."

It was a flash of shock to hear it, but not enough to stop Arthur from reacting. He glanced at Merlin, who already had his phone out and mouthed _Kilgarrah_. Arthur called Leon.

Leon answered on the second ring. "Arthur? Is something wrong? Shouldn't you be at dinner with King?"

"I haven't gone in yet. Scramble a small team. I want a tail on King and his date. Two separate cars, in case they split up."

"King brought a date?" Arthur could hear Leon's frown. "Do I want to know who?"

"Morgause," Arthur said.

Leon swore. Loudly, vehemently, full of sailor oaths and threats of scorpions up Morgause's arse and a bullet in the braincase and his own hands choking the life out of her, and _then_ , he'd work on King and find out exactly what the plonker was doing with the enemy. The rant took a full sixty seconds. Leon gathered himself, and said, "I'll take care of it."

"You're not tailing," Arthur warned, because he knew that if he didn't give that order, Leon would take it upon himself to follow Morgause. 

And possibly take drastic action.

Arthur couldn't -- wouldn't -- blame Leon if he did. If it had been Merlin, Arthur knew that he wouldn't be level-headed. As it was, it had been his _sister_ , and Arthur suspected that he wasn't being level-headed at all, because he was half-tempted to call the tailing teams later to shoot Morgause the instant they had the opportunity.

"Of course I'm not," Leon said, but it was grudging, regretful, almost rebellious, but Arthur knew he'd stay with Morgana in case the night went to hell. "I'll text you when they're on site."

Arthur hung up and listened in on Merlin's conversation. He was surprised that Merlin had managed to get hold of Major Kilgarrah, and annoyed that Kilgarrah would answer Merlin's call on the first go but not pick up to _any_ of Arthur's.

"Yes, we'll stall as long as we can. Yeah, Arthur's taking care of that right now. We're fine. We're about to go in, aren't we?" Merlin glanced at Arthur, and Arthur nodded. "By the way. What's all this bollocks about sending Will to Freya -- What? No. No. Don't blow me off -- yes, I know, we should go in, but --"

Merlin's shoulders sank, deflated, annoyed, and he rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'll call you tomorrow, and you're going to tell me why you didn't stop him from pulling Will into this --"

Merlin trailed off with a frown, staring at his phone. "He hung up on me."

"You can yell at him later," Arthur said. He exhaled slowly. "All right. Make as if we've never seen her before, don't know who she is, and as far as we're concerned, she's King's arm candy. I'm sure she'll suspect that we grabbed security footage from the Louvre and have her description from Morgana, but let's see how she's going to play this out."

Gwaine and Perceval nodded. Merlin gave him a raised eyebrow. 

They went in.

From the outside, L'atelier de Joël Robuchon was all semi-matte black with sharp white lines and an undertone of deep, sunset red, with a clear glass front for passer-bys to peek in on the ground floor filled with tall stalls and an open kitchen space. From the inside and all the way to the first level, the restaurant was a clatter of noise and subdued music and animated chatter that decreased in intensity as they approached the seating area.

The first level was decorated in the same minimalist style as the ground floor, but there was a serene, subdued air to it, almost aristocratic and regal. The conversations at the tables were too low to be heard, but that had much to do with the strategic design and layout of the room that cancelled noise and smothered drifting words with ambient music. 

They were greeted by a maître d' with sunken cheeks and slick-back hair that belonged in the American 1950s, and the only reason he couldn't pass for a leatherneck punk with a hot rod and a bubblegum-snapping poodle-skirt wearing girlfriend was the nose-in-sky sneer he gave the group as he casually inspected them to see if they met the exacting standards of the restaurant's casual-formal dress code.

"Arthur Pendragon. We're joining Cenred King," Arthur said, and the man sucked in his cheeks even more -- if that were physically possible -- before picking up several menus and leading them to their tables. Gwaine and Perceval veered right and sat at a nearby table with King's bodyguards, who nodded stiffly but said nothing otherwise at their arrival.

Arthur and Merlin were led to a different table a private three feet away -- a broad, square surface covered in rolled white linen and glittering silverware, with crisp black in semi-matte finish framing nearly everything.

"King," Arthur said flatly, never taking his eyes from the man while studiously ignoring the woman sitting next to him. He pulled out Merlin's chair and waited for him to sit; there was no missing the brief _I'm not a girl, I can get my own seat_ look that Merlin gave him, but thankfully, he didn't put up a fuss.

"Pendragon," King said, but he didn't quite manage the same level of disdain that Arthur had.

The maître d' waited patiently for the stiff greetings to be out of the way before offering them their menus. "Your server will be by shortly."

None of them spoke until a tuxedoed waiter introduced himself ("Jean-Claude", which couldn't possibly be his real name, because his cockney roots rang through despite the fake French accent). Arthur ordered wine for both himself and Merlin, and a second round of silence stretched until the waiter went through the wine-serving rituals and assured that it was up to Arthur's tastes.

Jean-Claude must have picked up on the mood, because he made himself scarce after mumbling that he'd return for their orders.

"You're late," King said unnecessarily. He was dressed in a dark grey suit that had a shiny sheen to it when the light struck the fibres just so, a shirt that might have been pink in any other lighting but was more of a subdued salmon at the moment, and a solid charcoal tie with faint white diagonal pinstripes. His gaze raked Arthur up and down, as if valuing Arthur's outfit against his own, before turning his attention to Merlin.

Like a dog, King licked his lips.

Of course he would. Arthur would have done the same in King's position, because, without trying very hard, Merlin had managed the rolled-out-of-bed bad-boy look -- a look that was made more beguiling by the bright of his blue eyes and the tease of the open collar. As it was, Arthur had the relief of being seated next to Merlin, where Merlin couldn't distract him.

Much.

"Fashionably," Arthur said. He returned the favour by glancing at Morgause, taking her measure in a long look. She was slight and petite the way a songbird was slight and petite, carrying herself with a fragility that would lure any red-blooded man to swath her in furs and velvet before locking her in a golden cage for her own protection. Her too-large eyes were a washed-out blue heavily lined in kohl to make them look larger still, her cheeks were touched by blush, and her were lips glossy candy-floss pink. Her blond hair was done up in curls that fell down her shoulders and back, and the dress she wore was a tartan green in a simple, curve-hugging cut with a square neckline and enough cleavage to distract a starving man from the temptation of food.

Whatever she'd expected to get out of her outfit, it wasn't working. Merlin was more interested in the menu, King was more interested in Merlin, and Arthur was more interested in the weight of the gun in his ankle harness, calculating how quickly he could get to it to shoot Morgause and King.

He wasn't sure which of them he wanted to shoot first.

Probably King, if only because he was ogling Merlin.

"Merlin," Arthur said, waiting until he had Merlin's attention. "This is Cenred King. King, this is Merlin Emrys."

"A pleasure. Pity we haven't met before," King said, his voice too much on the sultry side for Arthur's liking. He offered his hand over the glassware. Merlin, to his credit, didn't knock anything down when the two shook hands, but his cheeks were flushed red.

"I don't think we run in the same circles, exactly," Merlin said, glancing at Arthur.

"I seem to recall your name having come up on my company's recruitment list several years ago. In fact, you interest us so much, we kept your name on our list ever since, even hiring head-hunters to track you down to lure you away from whatever lucky business ended up with you in their employ." King let the silence stretch. "If you don't mind my asking, where did you disappear to?"

Merlin mumbled something under his breath and focused very hard on the menu.

"Arthur Pendragon," Arthur said, catching Morgause's attention. "And you are?"

"Not on anyone's recruitment list, I'm afraid," Morgause said. She smiled, small and tight, as if she were gauging Arthur's reactions. "Morgause Delamontagne."

"If anything, you're King's eye candy for the evening," Arthur said. "That should have been evident by the way your date failed in the common courtesy of introduction. Also, he appears to be mentally undressing my partner with his eyes."

Merlin's head snapped up, and in a scandalized tone, asked, "He is?"

"Certainly not," King protested, but if anything, his eyes drifted down Merlin's collar and into the V of his open shirt.

Merlin used his menu as a shield and leaned back in his chair, his expression wary.

"How did you two meet?" Arthur asked Morgause. He perused the menu -- they'd changed it drastically since he last came to L'Atelier. He affected a bored tone, and didn't look at Morgause while waiting for an answer.

"We're associates," Morgause said.

"You're in the business, then?"

"Something of the sort," Morgause said. "I track resources."

"Do you now," Arthur said. "Do you work for King?"

"Not exactly," Morgause said, and at that, Arthur glanced up. Morgause's smile had become canny and her tone had all the weight of manipulation. 

"Innuendoes and implications. How very droll. Any other time I'd play the game, but minimizing our exposure to King would be in our best interest." Arthur closed the menu. "Ms Delamontagne, enlighten me. What does _not exactly_ mean?"

"Do call me Morgause, please --" 

"Why don't we order?" King interrupted. "Then we can discuss the purpose of this meeting."

The waiter picked that moment to return to the table. He took Morgause's order first, then Cenred's; Arthur recited from memory in the menu's French, and when it came for Merlin's turn, Arthur took one look at Merlin's wide-eyed and somewhat-desperate _help me_ expression and ordered for him. The waiter left them with a mangled " _Très bien, monsieur_ " that made Arthur shake his head.

"The old Kings of France would have that one beheaded," Arthur remarked. Morgause, who had also ordered in French, made a noise of agreement. "So. King. You were saying something about the purpose of this meeting? I'm assuming there's something beyond flirting with Merlin and wasting my evening?"

"I'd hardly make arrangements to sit down with you if I didn't have the choice," King said dryly. "Uther has been avoiding my calls."

"I hardly blame him," Arthur said. "If I could have, I would have done the same."

"Indeed. Which is why I'm surprised that you agreed to this in the first place," King said.

Arthur didn't answer right away. He slung his arm over the back of Merlin's chair, running lazy circles over and over. Merlin lowered his head, turning toward Arthur, and there was a soft smile on his lips that King didn't like at all. "I fired her," Arthur said.

"Who?"

"Beth. Beth-short-for-Bethany-not-for-Elizabeth. The temp receptionist who should have been stuck on the main floor but who helped herself to a security guard's access card and a cushy seat on the management level. I'm sure she was meant to arrange a direct meeting between you and Uther, and, failing that, with whoever else happened to be available." Arthur watched King carefully, and while the man managed to feign ignorance, there were enough facial tics for Arthur to decide that he really should invite King over for a poker game -- it would be an easy way to get rich.

The HR department couldn't tell him very much, but all it took, in the end, was one phone call to Uther's personal assistant to get all the details that Uther hadn't told him during their brief conversation -- notably, that they already knew that King had been behind positioning Beth at reception.

Arthur saved King from embarrassing himself further by saying, "In any case, you have your meeting. Start talking."

The waiter arrived with appetizers, refilled their wineglasses, and left.

The caviar-stuffed crab waffles were heavenly. Arthur didn't pay much attention to the appetizer on the other side of the table, but he waited patiently for King to finish a taste, wiping his fingers, and bluntly forging into the conversation.

"How was the company's last quarter? Net profits versus merchandise in inventory?"

"Really? That's what this is about? You're fishing for insider information?" Arthur gave King a dark look. "Don't you have spies for this sort of thing, or did we finally weed out the last one?"

King rolled his eyes, and leaned forward, brushing a hand down his chest to keep his tie from touching the table or getting into his food. "For pity's sake, Pendragon. You may be an arrogant, spoilt arse --"

Merlin made a soft sound of agreement that he promptly muffled by sipping his wine. A fleeting smile crossed King's lips.

"-- but you're not stupid. You're as invested in the company as Uther is, and you'd do whatever you could to cauterize a bleeding wound. So you tell me. How many losses this quarter? More than usual? Plus or minus a few million in missing goods?" King made a rough gesture before reaching for his wine glass. "It's been going on for a few years. Not just Pendragon Consulting, either. We have losses at my company. The other major manufacturers have as well. We've all done the footwork and the investigating, and we've all turned up empty. The police, the Yard, Interpol. A big fat zero."

King held up his hand, fingers curled in an O. He held it in the air for several seconds, and, deciding his point was made, allowed his hand to drop to the table with a dull thud.

Arthur didn't answer. He let his eyes slide from King to look at Morgause, and said pointedly, "And you _track resources_."

Morgause smiled, thin and tight, pink lip gloss not the least bit smeared by the wine glass or the food. "I track resources."

The woman wasn't given to volunteering information, and Arthur had to give her credit for her personal reticence, however it was acquired -- training, subterfuge, necessity, or all of the above. Still, he couldn't help remembering Olaf's information, Olaf's warning, and the very obvious, Gibraltar-sized hint that Morgause, who still had not checked in with Interpol the last that Arthur verified (that morning), might be an important member of the NWO.

If she _tracked resources_ for the NWO, she held a significant amount of power. The person who controlled the supplies was ultimately responsible for the safety and the well-being of those who put in requisitions; without knowing where every bullet in a box of ammunition was stored, a soldier was as good as dead. A good quartermaster was hard to find, but Arthur didn't think that Morgause was merely the person who took inventory. If her background at Interpol told him anything, it was that she would most likely be responsible of overseeing the people who did the grunt work, and making decisions based on the information provided.

 _Resources_ , indeed, Arthur thought. _Resources_ could mean personnel -- magical or mundane, operation-critical or expendables. It could mean armaments -- anything from a cheap switchblade to a carbon-fibre knife to a 1800s musket to a semiautomatic rifle to ground-to-air missiles to lock-and-drop bombs -- non-nuclear or otherwise. It could mean supplies like food and clothing and shelter. It could mean means of transportation from a little scooter to a train to private jets.

Arthur watched Morgause for a moment longer. If she wanted to do a little tap dance around the question without giving answers, he would keep asking questions until he got them.

"What sort of resources?" Arthur asked, nudging the plate of appetizers toward Merlin, who had been eyeing the last crab waffle hungrily. Merlin flashed him the sort of fond, devoted smile that he really wished he could appreciate right now.

The smile hadn't gone unnoticed. King glanced between the two of them and frowned slightly, unhappily, as if realizing that his chances with Merlin were dwindling from slim to none. Morgause, however, seemed to have dismissed Merlin out of hand from the very beginning, and focused on Arthur.

"The sort of resources that cost a company a billion dollars worth of capital," Morgause said. "The sort of resources that are finding themselves in the wrong hands, and should the House of Lords ever hear how lax the security is at both of your companies --"

Arthur and King snorted in tandem. 

" _Hardly_ lax," King said, in the tone of someone who had discussed this many, many times before, but no one appeared to be listening.

Morgause ignored King and continued, "-- they'll be inclined to take action, up to and including an oversight committee that will require you pay the salary of a royally-appointed individual who will personally oversee the accounting and distribution, while similarly restricting the agencies to whom you are permitted to sell your goods and service."

Arthur was already aware of this, but from the expression on King's face, he hadn't known. It was one advantage of having contacts in the House -- and keeping in touch with them on a regular basis, something that King appeared to have neglected to do. While King sputtered and turned to Morgause, asking when she was going to tell him this (her cool-eyed stare had been followed by a sweet "I am telling you _now_ , sweetheart" that made Arthur shudder involuntarily), Arthur studied Morgause from over the rim of his wineglass.

"The bill is already making its way up the ranks," Morgause continued, expertly performing blind ripostes to block and deflect each and every one of King's questions so that she could continue speaking. "It'll be presented for voting soon."

It was interesting, Arthur decided, how Morgause slipped and revealed her hand. The bill wasn't common knowledge, but the information Morgana provided hinted that she had at least one contact involved with the law -- someone associated with a specific member of the House of Lords, or with Parliament itself. 

Arthur's eyes widened slightly -- he immediately suppressed each and every physical reaction -- in realization. The bill would be of enormous benefit to the NWO. Placing someone representing royal authority in each company in this position would give them the liberty of redirecting shipments, miscataloging supplies, throttling one manufacturing line in favour of another, and general fudging of the books.

Still, that Morgause would come out bearing herald to bad news indicated that they were covering all their bases in case the bill fell through. There was always that chance, even if they had sufficient members of the House of Lords under the NWO's yoke.

There were three questions that had been nagging at Arthur -- the first two ever since Paris, the second since Gwaine came out of the restaurant and warned them that Morgause was there. Why would Morgause risk her highly-placed position in Interpol by disappearing? Why would she stoop so low as to kidnap Morgana? And, the third: Why would she come out of hiding and place herself in a dangerous position right now?

He knew why Morgause was here. The NWO may be involved in stealing the weapons, but the internal investigation at Pendragon consulting indicated that the M.O. of one theft to another was not always the same. The criminalists had chalked it up to several different groups being tapped to conduct the thefts in the first place, but what if they were wrong? What if it wasn't one organization sub-contracting the work to other teams? What if a rival organization was involved? A rival organization who could -- who would oppose the NWO? Was it even possible that one secret organization -- the NWO -- could be curtailed by an even more clandestine organization? Was it the Directory -- though Arthur privately doubted that; their techniques were archaic and outdated -- or someone else? Whoever it was, whoever was involved, Morgause had been put in charge of finding out where the guns were going, and to _whom_.

That knowledge suddenly made things much more interesting for Arthur. He had the answers to his questions. Morgause may have left Interpol because the NWO was proceeding with their plan -- whatever their plan was, and he was certain that whatever happened, she had a way back to her old position if everything else failed. She may or may not have attempted to kidnap Morgana -- but everyone else with high-level access to the company -- Uther and Arthur -- had made themselves virtually untouchable. Uther, by virtue of his fortress wall of a secretary and his chauffeur-cum-bodyguard of dubious bodyguard capability, was protected by layers and layers of excuses. Unless someone was important, there was almost no way for someone without a known name to reach Uther directly. Arthur, because of his cover, was the roughshod son who was intractable only because he could be intractable, and was protected by not only intensive training, but by men who were equally trained.

Morgause had wanted to _talk_ to Morgana, even dropping hints for the subject of conversation -- the same one they were discussing now -- and had wanted to talk to Morgana alone, away from prying ears and watchful eyes.

Maybe there had been no intent to kidnap. If Morgause was a member of the NWO, who were the sorcerers who had attacked? Members of the NWO who disagreed with Morgause's tactics and who wanted a stronger approach? Members of a rival fraction who wanted to protect their identity and their location at all costs?

The answers to Arthur's questions only gave him more questions. He said nothing as Jean-Claude took their appetizers away and returned minutes later with their meals.

He'd ordered the quail with foie gras and truffle mashed potatoes, and, since he suspected that liver in any form wouldn't sit well with Merlin, had requested a goat’s cheese and basil ravioli with prawns. From the positively sinful and distracting sounds (Arthur reminded himself to thank Merlin later, for doing his best to keep himself quiet) coming from Merlin, the ravioli was quite good.

A quick glance at the other two plates revealed the restaurant's signature dishes -- a seared foie gras with quince for Morgause and a steak-and-ham platter covered with a parsley coulis for King.

"I hardly believe that you have mentioned this little detail because you're interested in a political and sociological argument -- in particular the drastic result of the bill going through which would place extreme restrictions on companies supplying our military --"

Which was probably the NWO's intent in any case, to eliminate a source of continuous armament for the army; Morgause's eyebrow rose in interest as he pointed that out, while King made an indignant sound around his steak. As a former military man himself, King would have a reason to protest this bill on those grounds alone. Simply put, the military _needed_ its weapons.

"-- but because you're trying to goad me into acting scandalized and to ask, _what can we do to stop this bill from passing_ , which is a moot point considering the money we all pour into certain driven political campaigns and the number of MPs who are in our collective pockets. And you'll respond, _well, if we can reassure the Lords that they have no need to worry, that the missing weapons have been recovered, and that we have stronger gun control measures as a result, they could conceivably be persuaded into giving the bill a pass_."

Arthur paused to take a bite of his quail; it was succulent. He watched placidly as Morgause caught herself from dropping her fork on the table in surprise.

"Once you've said all this, and I've soundly agreed with you that _this bill must not go through, we need to make certain that it doesn't_ , I might even ask, _how can we make sure that it doesn't?_ "

He knew that Morgause was paying attention to him now, re-evaluating her estimation of him while he unconcernedly continued to eat. Morgause and King both stopped eating altogether.

"And you're going to propose that I allow the person who specializes in resources tracking special access to our warehouses and facilities and shipping schedules so that we can, in some vain hope, track down where the shipments are actually heading." Arthur waved his fork in King's direction before spearing another cut of quail. "You've already agreed; you might even tell me that you've convinced our competitors to participate on the off chance that we'll be lucky and one of the shipments will be hit in the next few weeks before the bill comes to a vote.

"Maybe this once, you'll even be persuasive enough to convince me to participate in this little experiment," Arthur said, pausing to chew a bite, and gestured at Morgause, "And you might be persuasive enough to convince me to keep this enterprise secret from everyone else at my company, including my father --" Arthur waited a moment for confirmation, and continued on. "Let's say I'm yet another mindless yes-man, a little squirrely underhanded bastard --"

There was another soft sound from Merlin -- it might have been Merlin trying to choke back a laugh -- and when Arthur looked at him, he saw the crinkles of amusement around Merlin's eyes. He leaned back and offered his plate; Merlin helped himself to the truffle mashed potatoes, humming happily to himself.

It really was bloody cute. 

"-- and that I agree wholeheartedly with what you say and I'll do what you ask." He paused again, glancing down when he saw that Merlin moved a prawn onto his plate in trade, and returned his attention to Morgause. "I'll save you the trouble. There is nothing that you can do that we haven't already tried. Tracking devices? Satellite surveillance? Decoy vehicles? False filing papers? A man hidden in the storage boxes? If it was conceivable, we have tried it, and they have all failed. You can't do anything that we haven't already attempted, and as a result, you can't and won't do any better than we have."

"You haven't met my people," Morgause said, her eyes narrowing. Arthur suspected it was meant to be flirtatious; instead, it came out as a threat.

"If they're anything like you," Arthur said smoothly, putting in some extra effort in sounding as if he _really couldn't give a shite, if we're being honest here_ , "I'm certain that they are all beautiful people with a competency level greater than the average Londoner and who are all very efficient and effective in their field of specialty."

"So you're saying no," Morgause said.

"I'm saying that you have a few weeks to get the information that you need to secure the shipments for every company dealing in military armaments, very small odds that any of those shipments might actually get hit in the first place, and even less time to convince the people who need convincing that the bill shouldn't go through," Arthur said. "You have King's company participating, and who knows who else. The odds of any shipment getting hijacked doesn't increase significantly if you have access to tracking my company's shipments, even if you consider that we still have far more shipments than any other company combined."

"I disagree --" King began.

"Let's ask the mathematician in the group," Arthur interrupted, turning to Merlin. Merlin looked at him with a raised-brow, doe-eyed, pursed lip _Hm?_ expression, and Arthur just barely managed to keep from chuckling. "Were you paying attention?"

"Um. Yes?"

"And what do you think about the odds?"

"Oh!" Merlin's demeanour became vastly more animated, and he said, "Well, in order to calculate the probabilities, I'd need to compile a full database of information, including shipment routines, frequency of attack, modus operandi of the attacks themselves, correlate them with traffic patterns on the day of the shipments and correlate them with past successful thefts, as well as any safety and security measure that has been implemented along with records of how effective those were, and I'd need it from each company. It would take me a couple of weeks to compile and compute and assign constant values to non-numeric variables such as the lorry drivers moods on that particular day and whether the roads were slick or dry, or it might take me less time to compile if everything's already available electronically --"

Arthur finished off his plate and sipped at his wine while Merlin rambled, and he took the opportunity to appreciate _other_ people getting shell-shocked when Merlin talked math. 

"-- but really in the end, the odds?" Merlin looked around as if he wished there was a pad of paper and a pencil so that he could start calculating them. He shrugged his shoulders finally, and said, "Very, very insignificant."

Just as it sounded as if Merlin were finished, with King about to protest and Morgause schooling her expression in the way pretty young girls did when they were completely uninterested in the smart boy in the class, opening her mouth to _pleasantly_ rebuff him, Merlin said, "I mean, considering the variables, that the thefts have probably been evenly distributed among manufacturers and targeting specific types of shipments, by comparison, Pendragon's losses are actually really very small and I'd hazard a guess that the odds of actually getting hit even with one more potential group in the mix to be on the order of a fraction of one-one thousandth of a percentage point."

There was a long silence at the table. King stared at Merlin, a little aghast. Morgause stared at Merlin, somehow managing to look both nonplussed and dumbfounded at the same time. Merlin shifted uncomfortably in his seat, unhappy with the attention that he was getting, and glanced in Arthur's direction with the most perfect _did I do something wrong_ expression that Arthur started to believe that Merlin's ability to lie was improving.

In answer, Arthur gave Merlin a slight, approving nod that made the other man beam brightly and turned to King and Morgause. "Do you still disagree?"

King and Morgause exchanged a long look. It wasn't until Morgause nodded, the gesture so faint as to be unnoticeable, that King cleared his throat until he had Merlin's attention.

"What if a new, unknown variable was thrown in with your calculations?"

Arthur reached for his drink, but before he took a sip, said, "Ah, now we come to the reason why, at the last minute, you contacted Beth and made certain that she included several messages insisting that I bring Merlin along. Not because you were interested in a threesome, but because you wanted his expertise. Really, King. Could you be more obvious?"

"If it were a threesome I was interested in, Pendragon, you wouldn't be part of it," King said, his lips curling slightly.

"You have no idea how _pleased_ I am to hear that, because I don't believe there's enough paint thinner available on the island to get your hair dye out of my sheets," Arthur said.

"What makes you think they would be _your_ sheets?" King shot back.

"Because you pull so infrequently, your maid has been putting fleece sheets on your bed instead of the usual high-thread count Egyptian linen," Arthur said.

"Do you two want to be alone?" Morgause asked, her voice sharp. Her forced-neutral expression had cracked under the strain of her annoyance, and Merlin looked hurt.

Except where there was a faint crinkle of amusement around his eyes betraying his struggle to keep from laughing.

"God forbid," Arthur said. He waved a magnanimous hand for King to continue. "What so-called unknown variable?"

King leaned back, his expression pinched, but it wasn't until Morgause glared at him that he broke his silence. "Your lab in France. Is it your only lab in that country? Specializes in chemical manufacturing and engineering?"

"You know it does," Arthur said.

There was a long, uncertain silence during which King looked as if he'd just swallowed a lemon. Finally, he reached into his front pocket, glancing over Arthur's shoulder to gesture to Gwaine or Perceval or whoever had reacted first to indicate that he wasn't reaching for a weapon, and pulled out two folded sheets of paper. He said, "Don't ask where I obtained these."

Arthur took the sheets. He unfolded them carefully. One was a printout of a digital photograph with poor pixel quality, and Arthur decided to inquire as to whether visitors to the lab in France -- of which there should be none -- and all existing staff were relieved of their cell phones and other image capture device before they were allowed into the lab. 

In the photograph, there was a device approximately the size of a domestic network box, maybe a little larger, a little thicker, and made entirely out of a lustrous metal. It was sitting on a clean bench, and the white reflective surface made it difficult to approximate the actual dimensions. Its lid was ajar, as if someone had deliberately -- and hastily -- knocked it off to get a quick picture of what was inside, but hadn't managed to get a good angle on the shot. There were papers neatly stacked nearby, and the smudged, highly-pixelated logo in the upper left corner was the too-familiar graphic of Pendragon Consulting.

Arthur glanced at King. "I don't think I need to."

King smirked.

Arthur flipped the page. It was a full page printout, no margins, of what looked to be detailed blueprints, but nowhere on the page were any identifier tags or associated markers that would tell him what project it belonged to.

"Where's the rest of it?"

"You don't know what it is?" King made a soft, mocking tsking sound. "Shameful. Really, really shameful. A good head of industry knows every part that it produces --"

Arthur handed the blueprints to Merlin, and King's expression changed from amused to serious. Merlin wiped his mouth on the napkins and took the two pieces of paper, glancing first at the photograph before studying the schematics.

The waiter came by, collecting the plates, and Merlin had enough sense to withdraw the sheets, hiding them from view. When the waiter left was gone, Merlin spread the blueprint on the table. "Arthur? Do you have a pencil?"

Arthur handed him a gold-plated pen from his inner coat pocket. Merlin started drawing lines, following the schematics, thin and precise, not doing anything beyond simple tracing, following the schematics the way a mouse would follow the way out in a maze.

"We have it on good authority that some of the newest technologies to come out of Pendragon Consulting has been targeted over the last two years," Morgause said, pausing long enough to let Arthur connect the dots on his own.

It wasn't hard. He'd done it the instant he saw the photograph, but it didn't hurt to let Morgause think she was leading him around by the nose.

In simple terms, if King was able to get his hands on a photographs and schematics, then someone else could have, too. The NWO. The Directory. MI-5. The NWO's mysterious rivals, whoever they were.

Merlin sat up straight abruptly, looking at Arthur with wide eyes. He showed Arthur the drawing he'd made with the contrasting blue pen.

A bomb. Some sort of bomb. There were too many microchips and generators and transistors associated with it for it to be a bomb, but Merlin's sketch, transposing over the design in the plain-paper electronics equivalent, couldn't be anything but.

Arthur wasn't entirely certain how he managed to keep his expression impassive.

Merlin hastily folded up the papers and pocketed it, hiding it from prying eyes, and returned the pen to Arthur.

"Perhaps now, you'll reconsider?" Morgause asked, arrogant, cocky, smug. 

Arthur's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps."

"You can think about it over dessert," King said, waving for the waiter.

Arthur and Merlin exchanged glances at the word _dessert_ , and Arthur smirked faintly. He draped his arm over the back of Merlin's chair and leaned in to whisper, "Still want that sundae?"

  
**ooOOoo**   


The circuitous route Perceval took to get them home was blatant, deliberate torture. Merlin's leg jiggled in a nervous tic; the vibrations shook the car as if it were parked somewhere, with two teenagers in the back snogging and shagging for all they were worth.

_If only._

They didn't need to worry that they were being tailed, Merlin wanted to say. Anyone who wanted to get to them probably already knew where the flat was by now and had set up surveillance around the building. There was no point following them when it was obvious that they were turning in for the night. 

Logically, Merlin knew that Perceval was going through the motions, just as any good bodyguard would. Selfishly -- with a liberal amount of hormones in the mix -- Merlin wanted to get Arthur to the flat _right bloody now_ , and if Perceval didn't hurry, the team was going to get a show the minute the front door slammed shut behind them, if not sooner.

Merlin on his knees, sucking Arthur's cock. 

He couldn't it out of his head. The way Arthur had wrestled the meeting out of Cenred's grubby hands. The way he'd put Cenred and Morgause in their place. Neither of them had realized that they'd been manhandled through their attempted deception until Arthur had laid out their plan right in front of them. Merlin had known the exact moment when Arthur had _allowed_ Cenred and Morgause to gain control again -- not that they had been in control in the first place.

That had been -- there were no words. It had been _so bloody hot._

As much as it annoyed Merlin when Arthur took over their relationship by planning things out to the slightest, anal-retentive detail and neglecting to include Merlin in the decision-making, there was something just so _perfect_ about watching Arthur take the piss out of other people without their ever knowing. Arthur's ability to read people, to put the pieces together, to take every bit of information that he had collected -- it was so fucking scary, it was downright _prescient_.

The car stopped at a red light. Gwaine glanced over his shoulder at Merlin and smirked. Merlin tried to make his leg stop jiggling and failed.

There hadn't been much conversation after Cenred and Morgause left the restaurant right before Arthur and Merlin. They'd stayed as long as it took to complete the required social graces -- dessert, an after-dinner drink, coffee -- but once Arthur had made it clear that he would _consider their conversation and get back to them_ , refusing to commit right then and there, they ran out of things to discuss. 

Once Morgause understood that there would be no immediate commitment from Arthur, she had transformed into the eye candy she had probably meant herself to be all along -- blond and pretty, with a vacant stare and a fake little smile, while Cenred had revealed his true colours by dropping the businessman posh and revealing the shameless slag beneath.

_"So, Merlin," he began, leaning an elbow on the table, mindful of the quaint tumbler of expensive alcohol in front of him, "None of our incentives could lure you to my company when you were still in university. What would it take to get you to take a job with us now?"_

_"Um. I already have a job," Merlin said._

_"We checked," Cenred said, his eyes flashing with amusement, darting to look at Arthur as if daring him to argue his next point. "You're not on Pendragon's payroll."_

_"Um. No. That's because I don't work for the company," Merlin said, chancing a glance toward Arthur, who picked that moment to become as unreadable as the Mona Lisa. "I work for Arthur."_

_Then, and only then, did Morgause show any interest in Merlin, but it was calculating and fleeting._

_Cenred waved a dismissive hand in the air, forgiving the slight. "And I'm certain your experience consists of plain, boring, vanilla_ fumbles _, but beggars can't be choosers. In any case, you seem the sort who would enjoy new experiences, no matter how_ hard _or_ rough _\--"_

_Merlin felt a self-conscious flush when Cenred's eyes drifted from Merlin's cheek to the cut on his lip. "Um," he said intelligently, not sure how to respond. "I like my job."_

_"A pity," Cenred said, his gaze turning positively predatory. "Because I'd take_ such _good care of you."_

 _"You'll never have the chance," Arthur said mildly, a narrow of his eyes and a weight to his words warning Cenred off with an undertone of_ I'll kill you if you try _._

Merlin had squirmed in his seat -- was _still_ squirming in his seat -- because it was almost as if, for a brief moment, he was the prey being fought over by two hungry predators, only, there was one much higher on the food chain than the other, and no doubt who it was. Cenred had backed off like a man on a slippery slope, tumbling all the way down, bruised and stricken and shocked that he'd given up the hunt so quickly.

In the end, Cenred had picked up the tab. He'd scrawled his name across the receipt while never taking his eyes from Merlin, who had gotten the sundae that Arthur had promised him. Merlin had been very nearly finished scooping out the last of the gooey fudge on the bottom of the glass when a wrecked Cenred had gruffly grabbed Morgause's arm and said, "You have my number."

"That I do," Arthur had said, smirking openly. Merlin had only noticed Cenred's stilted, uncomfortable stride out of the restaurant when he'd caught Cenred surreptitiously adjusting what looked to be an uncomfortable erection. Merlin had blushed at the sight, lowering his eyes, trying not to laugh. He knew that he could be a terrible tease, but this was the first time he'd done it _on purpose_ , though he admitted that there had been a lot of satisfaction to see Cenred taken down a peg by a man's tongue around a spoon.

Arthur had indicated for Merlin to finish eating while he drank the last of his coffee, taking his time, because he was an arrogant, spoilt prat who didn't have to hurry up for things -- things had to slow down for him. Arthur didn't check on the state of things until they were safely in the car.

There had been text messages on his phone advising of the current situation. That the G's, Pellinor and Bedivere had arrived and were in position. More text messages to advise on their location as they followed Cenred and Morgause from the restaurant to their car and through the light late-night traffic across town to Cenred's flat. They had arrived at the restaurant together; had left together, and now appeared to be staying in.

"He's in bed with the enemy, then," Gwaine had remarked.

"Literally? Yes," Arthur had said, reading out loud the latest of the texts to come in from Geraint. _Now taking bets on who's going to shag whom._ "Metaphorically? No. I think Morgause is pulling King's strings."

And that was when Arthur told them everything else that he'd figured out at the dinner table. Merlin spent several long minutes marvelling at how Arthur's mind worked, at his brilliance, and deciding that maybe Arthur was a bit magic himself, before he was filled with dread.

Another group. Another unknown variable in the mix. One that Arthur didn't want the team to tell the Directory about -- not until he'd had a chance to check out a few things first.

"What things could you possibly check out?" Gwaine had asked, his scoff the half-laugh of someone who was ready to throw in the towel because there was just too much, too fast, but refusing to do just that because there was no way he would let anyone get the better of him.

Arthur hadn't answered. He'd looked out the side window and looked thoughtful, and the rest of them, knowing Arthur's moods, left him to his _thinking_.

Unfortunately, Arthur _thinking_ was just as hot as Arthur _in charge_ , and Merlin distracted himself by looking at the schematics that Cenred had given them.

The print resolution -- never mind the photo resolution -- was poor, and some of the details were faded, fudged, or missing altogether. There were connections that were nearly invisible, components that appeared to be missing, and it was a configuration that wasn't automatically instinctive to any designer. But take away the extra units and chips and embedded parts and trace out the underlying crux of it --

Merlin had thought that he had been mistaken when he'd first sketched out the design. He'd gone over it again and again while Cenred and Morgause and Arthur talked, then faded into silence. He'd sat back, a little shocked, and showed the sheet to Arthur.

Arthur was as well trained as the rest of Excalibur, if not more. Of anyone on the team, he had the most broad knowledge and capacity of every aspect of everyone's specialties. He could take over at any time -- for Gwaine as a long-distance sniper, for Geraint and Galahad on scouting missions, for Lance in a critical triage emergency. The only person who was second to Arthur in skill and ability was Leon.

That was why Merlin had shown him his drawing, the bright blue ink stark against the dull beige and off-grey of the schematic printout. Arthur would know what it was without Merlin needing to tell him, to walk him through the diagram, or writing out the words in big bold letters: 

_It's a fucking bomb._

At the very core, it was an explosive device. But not a device that either one of them had ever seen. It wasn't a bomb that had the three basic components -- the explosive material, the detonator, the trigger. It was far, far more complicated than that.

Merlin's first thought had been _atomic bomb on a chip_ , but with only a partial schematic to go by, it was hard to be certain.

The car slowed down, and Merlin glanced up hopefully, thinking that they were nearly there. They weren't. Gwaine caught his eye, nodding toward the paper, and raised a brow.

Merlin shook his head in answer.

"Oi. Princess," Gwaine said, reaching over his seat to snap his fingers in Arthur's face for attention. "We're going back to Paris, aren't we?"

"We are," Arthur said slowly, settling back in his seat with a grimace. The lines of tension along his shoulders and spine didn't ease, and somehow, he managed to keep the underlying aggravation from his voice. "I don't know when, and I don't know who's coming --"

"We are, of course," Perceval said, glancing at Gwaine.

"Are you volunteering me?" Gwaine asked, looking less cross than he sounded.

"Yes," Perceval said. Gwaine shrugged a shoulder in easy capitulation.

"-- I need to make a few calls first," Arthur said, rubbing his forehead. For a fraction of a second, Merlin saw what Arthur was doing his best to keep hidden -- a confusion that stemmed from not only not knowing how to make certain things _fit_ , but a growing irritation from not knowing what sort of plans he was going to have to come up with for the future.

"They can wait until tomorrow," Merlin said, giving Arthur as meaningful a look as he could manage. It didn't seem to work. "Get your head clear first."

Arthur exhaled slowly, and nodded.

And, _finally_ , they arrived at the flat.

Kay had gone to bed while Bohrs took over the late-night shift. Perceval and Gwaine went to the spare bedroom that they shared, and Merlin didn't miss the way that Perceval's hand slipped from between Gwaine's shoulders to the small of his back. And Arthur -- 

Arthur took one long look at the living room -- long since cleaned up of any evidence of any fight between Will and Kay, except for the missing coffee table -- and sighed inwardly before heading up the stairs.

"Well?" Bohrs asked, glancing over the couch at Merlin. "How'd it go?"

"Fine," Merlin said, rubbing his forehead. "Actually, not that fine, but nothing we have to worry about right now. Tell you about it in the morning? It's been a long day."

"Yeah, sure," Bohrs said, unconcerned. He waved a hand and returned to the telly. There was a late-night comedy talk show playing, but Merlin didn't recognize it -- it had been so long since he'd been able to just sit and watch television, that he wasn't sure he'd even know half of what was on if the rest of the team didn't tell him. Geraint, for example, had an unhealthy obsession for **Coronation Street**.

Merlin headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He paused at the top landing, remembering the time when they were on R&R and he'd stood right where he was, looking through the open door, watching a very naked Arthur wandering from his bathroom to the bed. The memory made his cock twitch; but at least, unlike that time, Merlin had every reason and right to push his way in and have his way with Arthur.

This time, though, Arthur wasn't naked, but he was just as unaware of Merlin's presence as he had been before. He'd hung up his jacket and was placing assorted items on the dresser. His head was down, still lost in thought, while he absentmindedly tugged off his tie.

Merlin walked in and shut the door behind him so gently that the sound of the latch barely made a click. He kept an eye on Arthur and went to the walk-in closet, hanging up his jacket only after retrieving the few items in the pockets and putting them aside. He kicked off his shoes, rolled up his belt, pulled off his socks, unbuttoned his shirt --

And glanced at Arthur. 

Arthur had rolled up his tie in a perfect little ball, had undone the top button of his shirt, and was now working on his cufflinks, each movement slow and deliberate, his mind obviously somewhere else. He wasn't lost in thought -- Merlin had seen him in that mood many times before, and this was nothing like it. No, it was a look of intense concentration, his brow weighed with the scrutiny of someone trying to absorb information that wasn't there, who was contriving possibilities and options and actions the way a Chess Master schemed every possible variation, every possible move, that would result from a pawn's simple advance across the board.

He stood immobile, the tension in his shoulders seeming to ease every time he came to a conclusion or unavoidable consequence, his body softening but not quite relaxing, his chin down in obeisance to whatever deity granted him the rare blessing of foresight, the gold fringe of his hair nearly into his eyes. There was a troubled press to his expression, the perpetual worry of keeping those dear to him safe, his lips a thin line of distaste when an imagined circumstance or possibility wasn't in his favour.

It took a near geological age before the right cufflink clinked on the surface of the dresser, before it was twisted round and round until it was facing the right way. An extinction event passed and the dinosaurs ruled the Earth again before the left cufflink joined its twin. The ocean rose; the ocean fell. The tectonic plates shifted and turned until they were shaped into a neo-Pangaea before Arthur's expensive watch joined others in the collection kept in his dresser drawer.

There was a pattern to Arthur's movements, the feeling of rite and ritual, as if to fail in one single act of adulation would displease the god or goddess looking askance upon its paladin, blessing him with guidance. There was a tremble of silence in the air, and despite its power, even silence _could_ tremble in the presence of holiness. 

Merlin didn't know if it was the overwhelming serenity, the crackle of his own magic, or the pull of the bond, but for a moment, a very brief moment, the darkened room lightened, dust motes glittered in the air, and the universe held its breath. There was a blur of images, the out-of-focus of freshly-awakened eyes, a fuzzy softness --

_\-- and Arthur took a step back, his chain mail soundless as he knelt, his left hand on the hilt of his sword, the elbow of his right arm on his knee, his right hand over his heart. A supernatural glow cast his red surcoat with the vibrancy of flame and gave life to the golden dragon emblazoned in his coat of arms --_

The neighbour's light switched off abruptly, the glow through the bathroom window blinking out, the image jarred to reality. Arthur stood up from his crouch and placed the ankle holster and his gun on the dresser. He paused, frozen, when he caught Merlin looking at him.

"What?"

Merlin walked toward Arthur, drawn by an instinctive pull that he would be able to follow even in the dark, even from a whole world away. He reached out, his fingers barely touching Arthur's arms on a downward slide before Merlin placed his hands on Arthur's hips.

The words were out of his mouth before he'd known he'd spoken. "You're beautiful."

Arthur's brows pinched in the middle, uncertain; his lips quirked into a half-smile, a muted response on his lips that weren't quite formed. It might have been his usual arrogant _of course I am_ or his scornful _you only notice now_ or even his deflective _you're such a girl_ , but none of those words were spoken. Maybe Arthur sensed Merlin's mood, or maybe Arthur saw something in Merlin's expression, but whatever it was, Arthur kept silent. There was a surprised breath, a little frown, a bashful shift of his gaze, the tug of a smile at one corner of his mouth, the curious touch of his fingers against Merlin's cheek.

Merlin pressed a chaste kiss on Arthur's lips, lingering until he felt Arthur's hand drift behind Merlin's head. He kissed again, and again a third time, each touch of lips gentle and soft and somehow searing hot every time they touched. It was addicting, that heat, that taste of Arthur, and he could kiss him forever, lazy and slow, making each one last, each one count. 

He came closer; they were chest to chest, and Arthur's warmth sent shivers through Merlin. He pushed gently, driving Arthur backward, guiding him to rest against the dresser. They stayed as they were, entangled in each other's arms, sharing the sort of kisses a young couple would take on their first few dates, questing and curious and shy.

There was nothing shy in the way Merlin drew away from Arthur, breaking the kiss. There was nothing shy in the way Merlin touched Arthur's face with his fingertips, tracing the strong line of his jaw, the stubborn set of his mouth, over cheekbones that stood out in stark relief now that his skin was flushed pink, to finally brush away the hair falling into his eyes.

 _Beautiful_ , Merlin thought, and perhaps that was too quaint a word, unsuited for a man like Arthur, who held himself with a royal comportment and noble standards, accepting responsibility that wasn't his to accept because no one else would. Because no one else could. His shoulders were straight and unbowed from the weight of the world, his spirit the slow-burning embers of a flame that would never blow out, his courage so great that it spilled over and gave strength and hope to those around him.

There was no one like Arthur, no one as perfect, no one as flawed.

"I'd follow you to the end of the world, you know that?" Merlin whispered. "I'd make a way to get there if that was what you wanted. I'd show you the stars when they burn themselves out, disappearing from the sky."

A soft gasp escaped Arthur's lips. Merlin's eyes trailed down to watch as they parted, as words tried to find shape and form, robbed from voice as Merlin's magic flared out unbidden and ran over their skin with the teasing rush of electricity. 

_Merlin_ , Arthur said, his mouth moving, but he had no breath to speak out loud.

"I'd send the clouds away so that you'd only ever see sunshine every day. I'd make the moon hang in the sky, full and bright and white, so that you'd always find your way in the dark. I'd damn the tides to ebbing and flowing at your will. I'd quiet the seas to mirror calm and take on Neptune himself when he raged."

Merlin silenced Arthur with a kiss, not so chaste this time, the two of them breaking from it breathlessly, panting for air. Merlin's cheek was against Arthur's, and he closed his eyes, feeling Arthur's heart pound in his chest.

Or maybe it was his own.

Or maybe it was both of their hearts beating as one. Merlin didn't know. He didn't have the mind to care.

"I'd make the rest of the world vanish to wrap you in the comfort of silence. I'd stop time so that you can lounge in the shadow of a tree as long as you liked without needing to move. I'd make the forest bloom in winter, I'd bring life to the desert, I'd make it snow in June."

Merlin could feel Arthur's lips move against his ear, so soft that it tickled, making him shiver. He leaned heavily against Arthur, stroking his sides, his back.

"I'd do anything for you," Merlin whispered.

"Anything?" Arthur asked, his voice hoarse. Ragged.

Merlin smiled. "Anything."

Arthur's arms held him tight. His hands ran up and down Merlin's spine, slow, sensuous, distracting, as if he searched for the strength in him to say the words. "Do I have to ask?"

"Never," Merlin said without hesitation. He pulled away just enough to be able to see Arthur, and his breath caught under the strength of his own desire when he saw the dark of Arthur's eyes, the need, the want. "Never."

Merlin felt a soft, intangible pull, the spread of heat that wasn't heat, of cold that wasn't cold. It drew him closer to Arthur, luring him for a kiss, and it wasn't until Merlin succumbed that he realized that it had come from the connection between them, from their tattoos.

He barely had time to wonder _how did Arthur do that_ , to find the answer to his own question not in the first, still-chaste, restrained kiss; not in the second, languid, lingering closeness that neither one wanted to break, but in the third kiss.

It was a dam breaking, the powerful rush of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water pounding over land and life. It was unstoppable, and it would be foolhardy to try.

Merlin didn't want to.

There was a terrible hunger in the kisses, of unbridled passion, of unwavering desire. Innocent kisses became open mouthed and wet and filthy, tongues slipping in to taste the other's mouth, to wrestle for control. Buttons popped, fabric tore, and a rough wrench left Merlin's arms trapped behind his back, his shirt bunched at his elbows, the cuffs still buttoned, keeping him bound at Arthur's mercy.

A soft growl escaped Merlin's chest. He took a step away from Arthur, his body immediately aching from the break of contact, and a flushed, panting Arthur blinked at him, confused, determined, impatient.

Merlin was certain that there was a spell to remove clothing from someone's body, but he couldn't remember it right now. Even if he knew the words to it, his rational self knew that he'd lost enough of his mind to lust that he ran the risk of making them both vanish in the process.

His magic thrummed in his veins, wanting release. Merlin growled again -- it might have been a guttural word of _command_ , but he wasn't sure -- and Arthur's eyes glazed over, his knees buckling not from the spell but from what Merlin now knew to be the effect of his eyes flashing gold. Merlin's hands tingled, burned, ached, and he followed his instinct and _pulled_ his arms apart.

His shirt tore as if it were paper.

Merlin ran the flat of his hands over Arthur's chest, his fingers digging into the fabric. Arthur's shirt drifted in tatters to the floor. Arthur groaned, leaning against the dresser, his fingers digging in the surface from the effort of keeping himself upright. Merlin's magic faded with the initial aggression, and the spell dissipated; he tugged fruitlessly at the waist of Arthur's trousers before fumbling with fingers that had suddenly doubled, even tripled, in a knotted tangle. He managed the zipper; he didn't have the mind for anything else, and leaned against Arthur, shivering from both exertion and breathless kisses.

He pulled away for a second attempt that went much better, and Arthur was stripped of trousers and boxers and socks.

Merlin stayed on his knees, his hands curling around Arthur's legs, stroking up muscular calves and solid thighs. He looked up at Arthur, at golden skin and soft, fine hair, at erect penis, gorged full with blood and _hard_ , at bumps and ridges of muscle and sinew and bones, at blue-eyes-turned-black looking down on him, his mouth open in soundless, wordless plead.

 _Beautiful_ , Merlin thought again, this time the word suited Arthur only because he couldn't come up with anything better.

Arthur made a soft, strangled sound when Merlin leaned in to nuzzle Arthur's balls, licking and suckling. It was Merlin's hands on Arthur's hips that steadied him when Arthur shifted his stance to widen his legs, but it was Arthur, only Arthur, who made a deep, helpless noise that made Merlin _ache_ and press a hand to his cock through his trousers to stop himself from coming. 

He waited until he had himself under control, until he was certain that Arthur didn’t, before stroking Arthur's length with a hand, replacing it a moment later with his mouth. His hand went where his mouth had been, teasing, rubbing, tracing a path toward his hole, and once his fingertip touched that spot, Arthur's hips hitched involuntarily, driving his cock deeper into Merlin's mouth.

He gagged in surprise and pushed Arthur back with his free hand, to hold him in place while he sucked him off and teased his hole over and over, running circles made slippery by spit until he breached it.

Arthur's hips hitched again, but this time, Merlin was ready for it. Every minuscule thrust of his finger into Arthur was exchanged for another push of Arthur's cock into his mouth, soft and undulating, careful, gentle. Arthur ran his fingers through Merlin's hair; Merlin moaned softly, circling his tongue around Arthur's length as he looked up at him.

" _Fuck, Merlin,_ " Arthur breathed. "Your _mouth_ \--"

Merlin let his finger slip out and put both hands on the dresser behind Arthur to brace for balance. He relaxed his jaw, his throat, and didn't move. Arthur's heavy breathing made his entire body undulate, his hips rocking, pushing his cock deeper into Merlin's mouth until Merlin's nose tickled from the soft fuzz of Arthur's pubic hair.

Arthur stilled, drawing out, uncertain; he made another wordless sound, a question, and Merlin answered by humming. Arthur groaned, pushing in; he withdrew slowly, reluctantly, before pushing in again.

It was a slow, slow slide, a careful, jerky rhythm, but nothing was better than this feeling of having Arthur in his mouth, of having his mouth fucked as if Arthur didn't want to do anything else, that he wouldn't want to do anything else, besides exactly what they were doing now. But even Arthur's own body could betray him, because the rhythm changed, the thrust sped up, deeper and faster, with Arthur holding Merlin's head in place while he thrust in and out --

Arthur's fingers tightened in Merlin's hair; he might have made a sound of warning as well, but Merlin didn't hear it, too lost in the feel of Arthur, the scent of him. Arthur came with a small, strangled shout, his come pulsing, thick and salty in a familiar taste that Merlin took, that Merlin swallowed, that Merlin licked from where he hadn't been able to contain it all.

Arthur fell back against the dresser, wobbly-legged and spent, his chest heaving. Merlin took particular care to clean him with his tongue, gentling his efforts when Arthur grunted softly in oversensitivity. Merlin wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand, and worked his way up, kissing, ever kissing, until he found Arthur's lips again. His hands washed down Arthur's sides, brushing his tattoo, his ribs. He brushed at the sweat-wet hair plastered on Arthur's brow. He waited for Arthur to come down from the rush of his orgasm, guiding him back with little kisses peppering the way.

Merlin knew when Arthur was with him again when the kisses were returned, at first lazy, then with hazy misses, before his lips were firm again against Merlin's, his hands solid at Merlin's waist.

They stayed like that for a while, kissing and touching until Merlin couldn't ignore the pressure in his trousers anymore. His cock was heavy against his groin, hard and solid and difficult to miss, begging for a release Merlin was nearly willing to give in to grinding against Arthur's thigh. 

"I want. I want to fuck you," he whispered, aware of how hoarse, how wrecked his voice sounded. Arthur pulled from him -- only a few centimetres, not enough for cool air to replace the warmth that they shared between them, and there was a soft expression in his eyes for all that they were black with renewed desire. Merlin felt -- rather than saw -- Arthur's cock twitch in renewed vigour. He felt, rather than saw, as Arthur pushed him back to the bed, unbuttoning and unzipping Merlin's trousers with far more skill and efficiency that Merlin had managed on Arthur's.

Merlin saw stars when Arthur freed Merlin's erection from his trousers. He bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood when Arthur's hands brushed against sensitive skin. He ground his cock up against Arthur's, leaving slippery trails of come, and every jerk of hips was returned with the keen awareness that Arthur was growing hard again. He groaned softly, unable to help himself from grasping them both together in one hand, the two of them fucking his grip until Arthur had the sense -- because Merlin definitely didn't -- to pull away, to grab Merlin's wrist and move his hand aside.

Merlin saw stars again, and not from any sort of sudden contact, not from any errant touch on overly-sensitive skin. It was because Arthur whispered in his ear, low and husky and hungry, "Want you to fuck me."

Merlin rolled Arthur onto his back and assaulted him with kisses -- on his lips, along his jaw, down his throat. He licked his way from one nipple down to his ribcage, raking his teeth over every muscular bump in his abdominals, let his tongue linger in a lazy circle around Arthur's bellybutton. He kissed the tip of Arthur's weeping cock and tasted Arthur's pre-come on his lips. He stroked Arthur's thighs, the outside, the inside, higher and ever higher until he brushed Arthur's sac. He pushed Arthur's legs open -- they fell apart without resistance --

"W-- Wait --" Arthur slipped away from him, twisted around, and grabbed the bottle of lube from the side table.

Merlin grabbed Arthur's legs, pulled him back, and adjusted him the way he wanted. He rolled Arthur's legs to his chest, keeping them there. Merlin crouched down and ran his tongue from the crack of Arthur's arse to his hole, tracing around it, coming ever closer to the target.

The sounds coming from Arthur were an orchestra of bliss broke only by the thundercrack of " _F-- Fuck!" when Merlin licked and lapped until Arthur was good and wet and relaxed -- wet enough for Merlin to push his tongue past the tight, resisting ring._

Arthur turned Merlin's name into a chant that Merlin only barely heard. While he tongued into Arthur, he stretched out onto the bed and ground his cock against the blankets, craving the friction and hurting for release. He stopped only when his jaw began to ache, wiping the saliva from his face on the blankets, kissing his way up Arthur's legs before letting them fall open for him.

Merlin could have come right there at the sight of Arthur, if he hadn't grabbed the base of his cock and given it a squeeze. If sucking his cock earlier had left Arthur wrecked, tongue-fucking him left Arthur completely and utterly _shattered_. His hand was around his penis, half jerking himself off, half keeping himself from another climax; his head was thrown back, his mouth was open, his eyes hooded with fluttered lashes. Arthur was splayed out lewdly, absolutely, completely _beautiful_.

There was no other word for him.

Merlin found the bottle of lube in the twisted folds of blankets where Arthur must have held on while Merlin had his way with him. He slicked his hand, his fingers, letting it spill down Arthur's balls. He rubbed between Arthur's legs, getting a moan of protest and a mumble of _taking too long_ and pushed a finger in.

Arthur lifted his hips, wanting more.

Merlin thrust one finger, two, into him, slowly, scissoring, stretching, taking his time, because, _gods_ , he wanted Arthur ready for him. He had barely breached Arthur with a third finger when Arthur grit his teeth and snapped, "What are you waiting for?"

Merlin pumped his fingers once more before withdrawing his hand; Arthur hissed in frustration that he was no longer filled with fingers and inhaled sharply in anticipation at being filled again. Merlin crawled over Arthur, reached for the open drawer, and had barely caught the edge of the condom wrapper between his fingertips when Arthur's strong grip around his wrist made him drop it.

"Arthur -- what?"

Arthur shook his head imperceptibly. His voice was so low that Merlin could barely hear him. "Bare."

Merlin stared at Arthur, hearing his own words from what seemed like forever and an age ago, his plead that very morning that there was no need for condoms, that there were many more reasons for it than reasons against. Questions would be asked if they were ever caught, since Merlin's cover as Arthur's boy toy meant that Arthur could and should get to fuck him anytime he wanted, however he wanted. They were both clean; they were both in a monogamous relationship -- at least, Merlin was, with no intention of straying, because he wanted _this_ , he wanted Arthur --

Arthur had only looked at him oddly and said _we'll talk about it later_. Only, they'd never had a chance to have that talk. Only, here was Arthur asking Merlin for the very same thing that Merlin had asked for --

Merlin sagged, resting his weight on his elbow, biting Arthur's shoulder to quell the flush of arousal that threatened to make him burst.

"It. It's just me, isn't it?" Arthur asked, whispered, begged, and Merlin heard the fragile tone, weakly hidden, of needing reassurance. _We'll talk about it later_ was Arthur code, and not for _I don't know if I'm ready for that yet_ , or for _I'm not sure if I trust you_ , but for --

"No one else but you," Merlin said. It wasn't enough that they'd expressed their interest in each other in the middle of a desert. That Merlin's magic had bound them together -- had betrothed them -- simply because Arthur had asked. That Merlin allowed Arthur -- as much as anyone allowed someone who had the mind to _do_ , whether he had permission or not -- to make decisions where they were both concerned. Arthur needed to hear the words out loud, to know with certainty that this was what Merlin wanted, that Merlin wasn't being pushed into something because of circumstance. Arthur wanted the promise of commitment, and Merlin gave it to him. "This. Us. You. I don't want anything else. I don't want anyone else."

Arthur pulled Merlin down for a kiss, sweet and filthy at the same time. Merlin's skin burned where their chests pressed together, his hands tingled where he touched Arthur, his cock twitched of its own volition and rubbed against Arthur's. It hurt, suddenly, this overwhelming _want_ , and Merlin was relieved when Arthur pushed him away with a gasp.

"Won't last," he said with a small, shaky laugh.

"Try," Merlin said, finding the bottle of lube again, not waiting to let it warm in his hand before coating his cock, his body jerking at the cold slick. He rubbed Arthur again, to make sure, but Arthur growled, just as impatient as he was.

Merlin took himself in hand, pressing the tip against Arthur's hole, pushing as gently as he could but Arthur opened easily for him, and that moment, that instant, Merlin nearly came undone. He bit his lip, screwing his eyes shut, wishing that the sounds from Arthur's mouth weren't driving him absolutely _insane_. Arthur's heat engulfed him, tight and perfect, and once seated in all the way, Merlin didn't want to move, wanting to stay like this --

Except the need was unbearable, had been unbearable ever since Merlin watched Arthur earlier, a voyeur peeping through an open doorway, a crack in a window, through a telescope lens. Merlin withdrew before sliding in again, slow, tortuously, and Arthur breathed a broken, stuttering gasp that was unlike any other sound Merlin had heard him make before. The sound echoed somewhere deep inside Merlin, drawing the words that Arthur had said only mere moments ago --

_Won't last --_

_Oh, gods, me neither,_ Merlin wanted to say now, because he really wouldn't. He held himself back -- just barely -- for two, three more slow thrusts, each of them earning him that special, completely lustful sound before his resistance broke and he abandoned all pretence and _fucked_. His hips struck the back of Arthur's thighs with a slap, and Arthur couldn't make those maddening little noises anymore, not now, not when he was breathless with a muted cry every time Merlin struck that spot inside that drove Arthur closer and closer to the edge.

Arthur tore a hand from where it grasped the blankets and wrapped his fingers around his cock, pulling, one, two, and he was coming in pulsing ropes of come that coated his stomach, his ring tightening around Merlin in reflex. The sight sent Merlin over the edge; he managed one more hard thrust and spilled inside Arthur.

Absolute silence in a cymbal crash of supernova explosions in a pitch black sky. The whitewater froth of a waterfall blistering down from a calm, swirling stream. The blistering hot steam and scalding ash of a volcanic explosion cooling and falling to a ground still trembling from aftershocks.

Arthur's legs had slipped to wrap around Merlin's hips loosely. His hands slackened where they'd been grasping Merlin's arms. His chest heaved heavily, his heart thundered, and there was a _completely fucked out_ expression on his face, and Merlin touched his cheek, peppering him with light kisses, trying to rouse Arthur while being barely coherent himself.

Merlin pulled out. Arthur winced only a little and stayed as he was. Merlin rearranged Arthur's limbs, moving him this way and that way until he could slot himself against Arthur's side. Merlin didn't have the energy to get up for a washcloth, so he cleaned them both up by murmuring the spell he'd learned when he was twelve and had awakened up with pre-adolescent come all over his pyjama pants, too mortified of his Mum finding out to throw them in the wash for her to find. Somehow, he found the strength and coordination to get the blankets settled, and he laid down next to Arthur with a soft, quiet, contented sigh.

They stayed like that for minutes, or maybe hours, before either one of them moved again. Arthur stirred, shifting an arm to wrap it around Merlin's shoulders, pulling him closer; Merlin rested his head against Arthur's chest, his hand resting on Arthur's stomach. It was how they always slept, tangled together, Merlin listening to Arthur's heartbeat, feeling it under his hand.

He listened as it eased, as it quieted, as it matched his own heartbeat, or maybe it was the other way around. He felt Arthur's breathing calm, the tension leaving Arthur's already relaxed body, the flutter of Arthur's fingers lazily, sleepily stroking the nape of Merlin's neck, tickling the short hairs.

It wasn't long before everything stilled, as things did in that bare moment before the bliss of sleep, the only sounds to break the gloom their own breathing, the distant, muffled sound of the telly downstairs, the white noise of London's late-night cacophony.

Arthur breathed in deeply, exhaling in a long, satisfied sigh. His arm tightened, easing a moment later, and the silence was broken by three soft words that brought stinging tears to Merlin's eyes, a painful swell in his heart, and a ridiculous smile on his lips.

"Love you, Merlin."

  
**ooOOoo**   


For reasons that Arthur didn't want to get into just yet (he called it instinct), he told Uther that, _no, I don't know what Cenred King wanted. It felt like he was courting us. Yes, I'll keep at it, and find out what he wants. _. As soon as Uther grudgingly stopped pressing for details, Arthur promptly took the rest of the week off under the pretence of working from home, knowing full well that Uther would immediately suspect that there was _more___ going on than Arthur was telling him.

That was true, particularly where King was concerned, but Arthur wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about Merlin. 

Damn the mission. Damn the Directory and damn Bayard and damn Will and Morgause and King and Bryn and Freya. Damn them all.

All that mattered was Merlin.

Arthur had wanted -- oh, hell, he didn't know what he'd wanted anymore. Something along the lines of a slow courtship, the way such things were supposed to go. He'd wanted the uncertainty of asking Merlin out on a date, not knowing if Merlin would say yes. He'd wanted the awkward moments over the dinner table when they ran out of things to say. He'd wanted the noisy snogging over a bowl of popcorn at the movie theatres, the walks through the park holding hands, the first night one of them stayed over at the other's and had breakfast together the next morning.

He didn't care about all that anymore. 

They were going about this in a backward fashion, taking a zigzag route to their destination, rushing some things while easing into others. It didn't seem to matter what happened between them, what petty fights they would have, what disagreements, what annoyances. They emerged from the fiasco the stronger for it -- if somewhat sex-flushed and bruised and sore afterwards. Still, Arthur meant for them to have every normal moment that they could together to make up for the moments that were as far from normal as possible.

He'd taken Merlin out every chance he had. They went shopping to update Merlin's threadbare wardrobe. They'd gone to the jewellery stores on the pretence of finding pendants and necklaces better suited for their roles than the ones that Kathy had used for the team's protection charms. Merlin had refused to cooperate, seeing right through Arthur's attempt to find out what kind of ring he should get Merlin one day, when it was safe -- from the NWO, from _Morgana_ \-- to announce their engagement. Instead, Merlin gave him a raised brow and a small little smile and a tiny shake of his head, and crooked a finger for Arthur to come over to where the pendants were on display instead.

They'd gone out for dinner at posh restaurants, had drinks at the pub, gone to one gallery showing and spent the day at the British Museum like Arthur had promised.

That was where they were now. At the moment, they were going through the displays with artefacts of Roman occupation in England, Merlin wandering off with Perceval trailing at his heels but keeping him well in sight. Gwaine hung back, lingering with Arthur.

"So, when's the wedding?" Gwaine asked. 

Arthur startled, barely restraining his initial reaction, wondering if his cheeks were flushed, if something had given them away. Gwaine and Perceval hadn't lingered in the jewellery stores with them -- they had walked in, made certain the area was secure, and walked out, giving Arthur and Merlin peace and quiet and privacy. And if Arthur touched Merlin more freely than usual, or if he was spending too much time dressing Merlin at some of the upper-scale stores, that was no one's business but their own, and perfectly normal boyfriend behaviour. 

"I don't dare get married before Morgana," Arthur said, because that was at least the truth. He itched to call Leon, to take him out somewhere quiet, and to beat it into him to _please propose already, because I know I'm going to be an idiot and I'll do something stupidly obvious and then_ everyone _will know that I've already popped the question to Merlin, and I don't want Morgana to kill me before my wedding night_.

Ever since they returned to London, Arthur knew that Leon was spending every waking minute with Morgana. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Arthur was hoping that Leon would realize what a bloody _idiot_ he would be if he didn't realize what he was missing out on by not having proposed a long time ago, and hurry up and do it already. 

"No, something's up," Gwaine said, frowning slightly, and _damn him_ for being his usual observant sniper self at right this moment, when Arthur was still reeling from the knowledge that he was engaged. And not _really_ engaged -- but magically handfasted, as if it had been decided by a power greater than either of them. "You haven't taken your eyes off of him once."

"Would you?" Arthur asked. Merlin was tapping at the glass of a display, his fingers moving here and there, and he looked to be explaining something to a couple of kids who must have mistaken him for a tour guide. Arthur wasn't so much amused by Merlin's antics as enthralled by the way he found delight in just about everything. When he looked again, the kids had moved off, and Merlin and Perceval shared a quick grin before moving on to the next display. The only reason why Arthur wasn't there with Merlin right now was because he was waiting for Major Kilgarrah.

Apparently, he'd promised Merlin that he'd call Arthur "soon". Arthur was still annoyed that Kilgarrah hung up before Merlin could pass him the phone. Again.

Arthur glanced at Gwaine when he realized that the silence had lasted a little too long. He followed Gwaine's gaze, expecting him to be checking him out. It would be fair -- Merlin was in fine form today, with tight black jeans and a black shirt so worn that it might as well be transparent -- but Gwaine wasn't looking at Merlin. He was staring at Perceval. That knowledge struck Arthur with something of amazement, and an overwhelmingly pleased feeling settling on his shoulders.

"You finally shagged," Arthur said, the grin spreading across his lips matched by the quick and wide smile on Gwaine's face. "How did you convince him?"

"I didn't," Gwaine admitted, shrugging. His head ducked coyly; he was abruptly quiet, silent, shy. That was a new development; Arthur had never seen Gwaine _shy_. "Look, let's not talk about it, yeah? I... I don't think I'm..."

Arthur could see what Gwaine wasn't saying, that he couldn't say even if wild horses dragged it out of him. Perceval was a principled man where Gwaine most assuredly was not; Gwaine's easy ways, his charms, his malfeasances, they wouldn't work on Perceval. Perceval demanded more, _deserved_ more, and he wanted Gwaine, who could deliver. Except Gwaine was blind to his own merits, believing himself a lesser man than the one Perceval could see in him. That they all knew he was.

Gwaine smiled shakily. "I'm not the man he wants, but --"

"Then be that man," Arthur said, slapping a hand on Gwaine's shoulder. "And don't give me any bollocks that you don't think you can. Perce wouldn't be after you if you weren't exactly who he wanted."

"Arthur --"

"A wise man gave me some good advice, once. The sooner you quit being a wanker, the happier we'll all be."

Gwaine's lips quirked as he recognized the very same words he'd given Arthur when Arthur had been pushing Merlin away. He shook his head, then, after a moment, smiled and nodded slowly. "Right. Yeah. I'll do what I can."

"Do better than that," Arthur warned. 

Gwaine smirked. His eyes flicked to the left, his brows pinched in the middle, and he jutted his chin at a spot over Arthur's shoulder. "Don't look now, but we've got a visitor."

Arthur checked his watch before turning around under the pretence of seeing where Merlin and Perceval had gone, and surveyed the light crowd. It was mid-afternoon, late enough that the children on school trips were trickling out to be bussed home and too near to closing time for tourists or locals to come and fully take in the sights at the museum. No one stood out of place until he spotted the familiar frame of Major Kilgarrah, wearing a tweed suit and battered bowler's hat as if it were an uniform. He was peering over a glass box, examining some sort of medieval object. Arthur wasn't close enough to see what it was. Some sort of hand tool, most likely, bits and pieces of broken wood and metal that Arthur wouldn't have been able to identify as a hammer or whatever it was without a detailed diagram.

He wasn't being very subtle. Every few minutes, he would turn and glance in Arthur's direction, then tilt his head in invitation. Arthur waited until a few more people left the room and started his own circuit, trying to look as bored as humanely possible. It took some time, but he finally caught up to where Kilgarrah was now standing in front of a brightly-lit display.

"Major," Arthur said quietly, pretending to read the placard to the side of the display. "Fancy meeting you here. I thought you were going to call."

Kilgarrah grunted.

"I didn't think we'd ever get a chance to talk again," Arthur said, keeping his voice low. "It's not as if you're involved. Or as if you're our _handler_. Or even pick up your damn phone."

"There are complications," Kilgarrah said.

"I filed my reports," Arthur said. It was something that he'd learned to do by himself, since he couldn't always rely on Merlin to do it for him. In those reports, there were also things that he withheld from the reports -- his personal opinion, his assessment of the situation, his suspicions, all things that he would rather discuss with their handler than to have it documented on paper. Like the _other_ organization that seemed to have the NWO more worried than the Directory. "I know there are complications."

Kilgarrah didn't answer him. The Major was so still that Arthur wondered if there was something else.

"Unless you're talking about a completely different set of complications that we're not aware of," Arthur said. Kilgarrah leaned down to study one of the items in the glass box. Arthur tried not to frown, to purse his lips, to reach over and grab Kilgarrah and shove him against the wall, demanding that he stop playing games. Instead, he took a chance, and asked, "Does it have anything to do with the _other_ secret organization?"

Kilgarrah straightened abruptly.

Encouraged, Arthur continued, "The one that has the NWO chasing its own tail? The one that the Directory probably knows about but didn't mention because even their own agents think they're nothing but phantoms?"

"Don't worry about them," Kilgarrah said, giving him a sidelong glance. 

"So they exist. They're smarter than the NWO if they can remain hidden and strong enough to make them worry," Arthur said, remembering Morgause's offer to him at the dinner table and how there had been that suppressed undertone of desperation. "Who are they?" 

"Not your enemy," Kilgarrah said. "Don't worry about them." 

"Major --"

"Do you want to ask me questions about things I can't answer, or do you want to know about the Directory's latest attempt to plant a mole with the NWO?" Kilgarrah's voice was sharp. 

Arthur turned to look at him for a long moment before sniffing and looking down at the collection. Jewellery, and a lot of it -- torcs and necklaces and bracelets and rings. A treasure trove of rings filled the left half of the case, and Arthur resisted the urge to study them to see if there might be one that Merlin would like. There would be time for window shopping later, when Kilgarrah had gone.

"I'm gathering that it was successful," Arthur said. They hadn't heard from Will since the day he "kidnapped" Merlin, but a worried Merlin checked his phone every now and then and confirmed that Will was active.

"Yes," Kilgarrah said.

"Was it worth it? All that work we've been doing, only to have the rug pulled out from under us? Is this why you're here? You're sending us back to active duty?" Arthur tried not to think about that. He didn't want to think about that. If they returned to the front lines, he and Merlin wouldn't be able to --

"This _is_ your active duty," Kilgarrah said. "You're not out of the game yet. You've made contact with Morgause Gorlois --"

There was a long, pregnant pause. Arthur leaned down and studied the rings. They were all large, too solid for a dainty lady's hand, wide and thick. They were tarnished, which Arthur supposed lent to the whole Medieval appeal of them, carved in crude designs that he couldn't make out without getting closer.

He'd already decided on a tri-piece band, platinum and white gold, the middle engraved in a swirling crown pattern, a ruby in the centre, as a wedding band for a marriage that wouldn't happen for _bloody decades_ at the rate that Leon was going. Arthur suspected he might have to take drastic measures and propose to Morgana himself on Leon's behalf -- creepy as that was -- if he ever wanted to be able to tell people that he had, in a strange, roundabout fashion, asked Merlin to marry him.

The wedding ring was easy. But the engagement ring? Merlin said he didn't need one, that they were already bound, and that was enough for him, but Arthur wanted something that other people could see and know that Merlin was his.

Arthur straightened and realized that Kilgarrah hadn't finished his sentence. "What about her?"

Kilgarrah turned to look at him, an expression of cautious scrutiny adding weight to his words. "You played your hand well with Cenred King. Left them like worms dangling at the hook without any decision made. Morgause -- the NWO -- they're desperate to get information, any information, on this other organization. They'll get them through you."

"And you're certain of this, how, exactly?" In his last report, Arthur had been forced to include the _reason_ why King had been sniffing around the laboratory in France. He would rather have kept his family's business confidential, and his only consolation was that he did not pass on the photograph or the schematics that King had given him. He supposed that he _could_ have contrived some sort of other plausible explanation for the meeting in the first place -- King being a wanker, for one -- but Arthur was willing to wager his trust fund that the instant Uther decided that Arthur was keeping information from him, he would've been on the telephone to Bayard to find out what was going on. And now? He was willing to wager the winnings from his previous wager that Kilgarrah was keeping something from _everyone_.

His proof came when Kilgarrah avoided the question entirely and said instead, "Morgause is highly placed among the NWO. When she gives an order, everyone scrambles to do it and they try to get it done yesterday, if you gather my meaning."

Arthur did. It likely involved magic and things that went bump in the night and all the scary things that he denied scared him when he watched horror movies. Especially Japanese ones.

"You'll be getting a call," Kilgarrah said. "Do your best in the challenge."

Arthur wanted to ask how Kilgarrah was so sure that he would be getting a phone call in the first place, but he suspected that he already knew the answer to his own question. 

Morgause wanted to get her perfectly-manicured fingernails in the _so secret even Top Secret doesn't cover it_ organization, and she was willing to do whatever it took , from casting pennies in every fountain or well from here to Kent and making a wish to contriving a elaborate political plot full of intrigue and deceit and familial backstabbing. If she couldn't get an agent in Pendragon Consulting through Morgana, then she would try the next best thing: Arthur himself. And Arthur had made it clear that he was on the fence about it until he could get more information himself about the supposed device.

The only reason why Morgause would be giving a particular order that would result in Arthur getting a phone call was if she believed that the mystery cabal _was definitely_ going after the device. She would only know of the mystery cabal's intent if she had somehow received information confirming those very details. And she would only have received that information if...

Arthur raised a brow at Kilgarrah, but he found himself asking, instead, "What challenge?"

"How would I know?" Kilgarrah asked, taking a slight step back to look at Arthur. 

"Then how do you --"

"Because that's how they do it. They bring someone in by test or trial. Cracking codes was Merlin's test, and he's proven that he can do it. There's nothing to test you for. You'll be getting a trial."

Arthur took a deep breath. The only reason why he would be brought in now was if Morgause knew he would have to do whatever she told him to do once he was in the NWO.

"A trial of what?" Arthur prompted. At their briefing of the NWO's recruitment techniques, they hadn't been told about the so-called trials.

Kilgarrah gave him another look. Instead of answering -- no surprise there -- he said, "Good luck."

He turned to wander to the next display, pausing to glance between Merlin and Arthur, and turned back to say, "Is it too early to offer congratulations?"

Arthur startled. Were they really being that obvious? First Gwaine, now Kilgarrah? "For what?"

"Too early, then." Kilgarrah smirked knowingly and went back to wandering around the room, studying each display. It wasn't until he left the room, chatting up a middle-aged woman, that Merlin came over. 

"He say anything useful?" Merlin asked, brushing the back of Arthur's hand but not quite taking it. In public, Merlin was playing his role to infuriating perfection -- the tease who didn't quite make any directly overt invitation, but who made it clear that the invitation was open. The contact made Arthur shiver. Before Arthur could answer, Merlin glanced at the display in front of them and rolled his eyes. " _Really_ , Arthur? The only bloody thing you find interesting in the British Museum, and it's _rings_? Could you be any more obvious? I thought we were --"

"That reminds me," Arthur said, taking Merlin's hand because he couldn't stand the electric shivers of the bare minimum of contact. "This thing between us?"

He gestured between them.

"Yeah?" Merlin frowned a little.

"The words you said you heard --" Arthur paused to glance around, making certain that no one was close enough to listen in, "-- the thing about the time of binding and the final vows?"

Merlin glanced at the rings and back at Arthur, his brow furrowing. "Yeah?"

"How long do we have? What happens if we don't, you know, by then?" Arthur asked.

"Um." Merlin's brows furrowed as if he hadn't thought about that. He shook his head, bringing his free hand to his brow in thought. "Um. Well. Normally, handfastings are a year and a day. Maybe it's the same? And. I. I don't know, I guess it might fade?"

Arthur could feel his face falling into an expression of displeasure. "Damn it. I've got to work on Leon," he muttered.

"What?"

"Never mind," Arthur said, tilting his head, pulling Merlin with him. They'd been at the museum long enough; they would have plenty more chances to return in the future. He would make certain of it. "The Major said to expect a call."

"From who?"

Arthur shrugged. "Who do you think?"

There was a long silence before Merlin answered. "Oh."

"Yeah." Arthur glanced over his shoulder at Gwaine and Perce. They weren't quite walking hand-in-hand, but they were close enough that they might as well be snogging right now. Arthur was amused by the thought and wondered how he could use it to tease Gwaine -- turnabout was fair play, after all. "What do you feel like for dinner?"

"Pizza?" Gwaine suggested. "Wait, are we going back to the house?"

"Nah, we can go out," Arthur said, squeezing Merlin's hand. "Thai?"

"Sushi?" Merlin suggested.

"I second the motion," Perceval said.

* * *

It took three days of the usual routines -- more shopping (despite Merlin's protests), a robotics competition (Kay complained, but he ended up cheering louder than any of them), a footie match (just the local school teams, but Gwaine and Perceval had been thrilled), attending work meetings (and playing games on his iPhone the entire time) -- before Arthur received the phone call Kilgarrah predicted.

Freya called Merlin first. 

"In what fucking universe do you think we're in that I'm still not pissed at you?" Merlin asked, hanging up without waiting for an answer. He let the next six calls go to voicemail, leaving the phone on the new coffee table. Arthur liked the new table. It was solid oak instead of glass, and might even hold up better if someone was thrown on top of it. 

"What did she want?" Arthur asked, letting Merlin settle against him -- it took a bit of pillow wrangling, an epic struggle with the blanket, and a rescue of the bowl of crisps -- before putting his arm down the slight curve of Merlin's waist.

"Don't know," Merlin said mildly. He patted around for the remote with his free hand.

"Looking for this, mate?" Kay asked, wriggling the remote. He took the bowl of crisps from Arthur and collapsed in the armchair. "I told you, my night to pick the movie, and we're watching **Troll Hunter**."

"But that jiggly handheld-Blair Witch motion movie crap makes me nauseous," Merlin complained.

"You'll just fall asleep anyway," Gwaine pointed out.

"Move over," Perceval said. He distributed the beers around the table before sitting next to Gwaine on the loveseat. Arthur watched them for a moment, but neither of them did much more beyond a chaste readjustment of limbs and pillows until they were glued together from shoulder to ankle. Arthur was amused; they were even sharing the same footstool.

"Arthur! For fuck's sake. What's wrong with your popcorn maker?" Bohrs yelled.

"Is it plugged in?"

"Yes!"

"Did you add popcorn to the basin?"

"Yes!"

"Did you turn it on?"

There was a very loud click-click-click-click in answer.

"I'm not getting up," Arthur said, at the same time that Merlin said, "I'm not letting him up."

Kay got up from his seat and headed to the kitchen. There was a rustling sound, a loud click, and the low hum of the popcorn maker's motor. "And you wonder why no one will let you handle explosives."

"Fuck you too," Bohrs said.

"You're welcome."

The movie was a half-hour in when Merlin's phone rang with a different ringtone. Merlin's body jerked -- he'd obviously been asleep, because he'd been snoring lightly ever since Arthur stopped running his fingers through Merlin's hair. That had been the point in the movie when the kids with the cameras bumped in the bear poacher for the first time.

Merlin sleepily knocked the phone from the coffee table. It fell to the ground, and Merlin curled back onto Arthur's lap.

"Merlin."

"Um."

"Pick up your phone."

There was a bit of fumbling, but Merlin eventually brought his phone to his ear somewhere around the second or third phone call.

"Fuck off, Will," Merlin said without looking at the call ID. Then he hung up. The phone rang twice more before he answered the phone. "I'm not talking to you." He hung up again. On the next call, Arthur answered.

"Don't hang up, Merls. I told you I'm sorry, all right? I am. It's just I were worried about you, and, and, Freya's worried too, and, _for fuck's sake, Freya, will you leave me alone, I'm trying to talk to Merlin, I've just got him and he's not hanging up --_ Merls? Merls, are you there?"

"He doesn't want to talk to you," Arthur said. "In fact, he doesn't want me to be talking to you right now."

Merlin raised an arm in the air and flailed about in mock attempt to get the phone out of Arthur's hand. Arthur choked back a laugh.

"Arthur," Will said, stiffly, as if standing at attention, utterly disgusted that he was doing _this_ , but unwilling to hang up as long as he had a lifeline to Merlin. The way Will said his name, it was almost _regrettable_ that it had to be Arthur. "Is Merlin all right?"

"Yes. What will it take you to stop bothering him?"

"Are you seriously offering me money to stop calling?"

Arthur pulled the blanket over Merlin, leaving just enough exposed for Merlin to watch the movie -- though he suspected that Merlin was already drowsing off again -- and for him to pet his hair. "No, Will. Offering you money is the last thing I would do. You'd just turn around and use it to buy a gun, then you'll nest somewhere and hope I walk by one day, then you'll shoot me."

"Damn right I would," Will snapped.

"You're not any sort of friend if you'd kill your best friend's boyfriend," Arthur said scoldingly, using his best mock-the-teacher voice. _That's right, you tell him_ , mumbled Merlin, his hand curling around Arthur's leg. "You should be happy that he's found someone who wants to take care of him."

"I've seen how you take care of him --" Will said, pausing, and there was the sound of a struggle. " _No, it's not Merlin, I'm talking to the pillock -- No, Freya, fuck off! I'm not letting you talk to him -- What? Yes, Bryn, it's Arthur. No, I --_ "

Arthur waited for a moment. "Well. If you have nothing important to say to me, we're done here."

He hung up on Will mid-word, but he held onto the phone. It was a good ten minutes later before it rang again, this time from an unknown number. Arthur ignored it until that same number popped on the display three more times.

"Aw, come on, answer it already," Kay said. "It's ruining the movie."

"I think the movie is ruining the movie," Bohrs said.

"You like chick flicks. You don't get to judge," Kay retorted.

"I do not --"

The phone rang again, and everyone -- except Merlin, who reached sleepily in the air to swat at the ringtone -- looked at Arthur to see if he'd answer. Arthur held up the phone, gave a sharp nod, and Kay paused the movie.

"This had better be worth my while," Arthur said.

"Good evening, Mister Pendragon," said a new voice. It was a man, younger than Arthur, he judged. There was educated polish to his tones, but there was no hiding the Welsh accent. "My name is Tristan Heynes. Bryn Rowlands is an associate of mine."

"That's a rectifiable tragedy," Arthur said.

"He informed me that you are aware of our organization and expressed an interest in membership. He convinced me that a man of your skills and position would be an asset --"

"Bored already," Arthur said. Merlin had stilled; from the way his shoulders had tensed up, Arthur knew that Merlin was listening in on the conversation. Gwaine and Perce, Bohrs and Kay -- they were elbows-on-knees watching in interest. They knew what Major Kilgarrah had told Arthur at the museum, and they had been waiting for the call as much as Arthur had.

"And yet, you are still on the line," Tristan said.

"That's easy to fix," Arthur said. He pulled the phone from his ear and hung up.

Merlin pushed himself into a seated position, tangling himself in the blankets in the process and nearly slipping off the couch. His hair stood straight up where he'd been laying on the pillow and his eyes were a little unfocused from sleep, but he said, "If that was Kilgarrah's phone call, why'd you hang up?"

"Because your old friend Tristan is a giant grade-A pillock," Arthur said. He raised a brow when the phone rang, and he let it ring three times before he answered. "Good evening, Mister Heynes. You have twenty seconds to tell me why, after your people's _appalling_ treatment of my partner and your own terrible lack of telephone manners, I should be remotely inclined to hold any conversation with you. You may begin."

"I will personally guarantee that you will head Pendragon Consulting within the next three months," Tristan answered without hesitation. "You will encounter no resistance to the change in leadership. Not even from your own father."

A cold wash ran down Arthur's spine, settling uncomfortably in his belly. The rebellious son, the playboy prat, the rich kid who believed he deserved more than he had -- that was his cover. The Directory had taken great pains to spread rumours -- only capitalizing on the already somewhat-strained relationship between father and son -- of terrific shouting matches that had probably entertained the whole of London if only they had truly happened. He knew that he should be playing along. He knew that he should be chuffed at the offer, but that he should also act distant, detached, as the mere idea didn't appeal to him at all.

In reality, it didn't. His innards seized at the hint of a threat against his father.

Arthur switched the phone from one ear to the other, shutting his eyes tight, gritting his teeth together. He took a deep breath and said, "I'm listening."

"I thought that would catch your attention, Mister Pendragon. In a moment, you'll receive a text message to this number. Go to that address. Be there in one hour. Bring Mister Emrys, and, oh, if it's at all possible for you to come without an entourage, I suggest you make the attempt."

This time, it was Tristan who hung up on Arthur, leaving Arthur to study the address in the text message that came in a few seconds later. 

"Well?" Gwaine asked, breaking the silence.

Arthur gave Merlin his cell phone. Merlin saw the message and cringed. "I guess we're on, then?"

He slid into Arthur's lap with the intention of someone who didn't plan on getting up if he could help it.

"We're on," Arthur confirmed. He didn't hear it when Kay turned off the telly or when Perce and Gwaine retreated to their room to change their clothes and gear up. He didn't hear anything when Bohrs clomped to the kitchen and cleaned up his mess with the popcorn maker before getting his gun.

What he heard was Merlin's heartbeat against his chest, his soft breath tickling his throat. What he felt was Merlin's reassuring weight against him, the soft kisses against his cheek. 

"It'll be all right, yeah?"

"It'll be all right," Arthur said. They both headed to their room to change. Arthur had a few calls to make -- they might need backup.

* * *

The address brought them to a warehouse in the industrial district a stone's throw from the Lockdown. Gwaine and Perce got out of the car with them; Kay and Bohrs, in a SUV, emerged a few minutes later after having gone ahead to do a quick walk-around.

"There's about twenty of them inside. Recognize most of them from the NWO debrief," Kay said, keeping his voice soft. "Bohrs counted at least three overwatch positions --"

"Double that," Gwaine said, looking as if he weren't even invested in the conversation. He was plucking a loose thread from his shirt.

"But our resident expert says that it's more likely that we've got six on our six no matter where on the compass we're going," Kay said without missing a beat. 

"What is it like inside?" Perceval asked.

"Set it up like **Fight Club** , they did, if that tells you anything," Kay said, nodding at Arthur. Arthur felt his jaw tighten with distaste at the same time that he felt the familiar thrum of adrenaline through his blood. Kilgarrah had made mention of a trial.

At least he knew what it was now.

"It does. All right. They'll search you, but hold back whatever you can, if you can. Don't put up a fuss. Remember that any one of us can take these wankers down without a bloody gun in hand. Let's go," Arthur said. Perceval and Gwaine led the way. Perceval's leather jacket was stretched tight at the shoulders, tapering down onto his narrow waist, looking very much the picture of a heavyweight prizefighter. Gwaine was probably the most heavily armed of the group, but there were no obvious signs; guns and knives disappeared seamlessly beneath faded jeans and a Dockers' black dockworker jacket that had seen better days.

Kay and Bohrs took up the rear. Bohrs didn't have anything on Perceval when it came to height and weight -- he was several stone lighter and centimetres shorter -- but he carried himself with the self-assured strut of a man who could take someone down with one blow. Of them all, it was Kay who was probably the most menacing in loose jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, with nowhere obvious to stash a weapon.

If push came to shove, it was _Merlin_ they would rely on if everything went seven shades of bad. No one would suspect Merlin of anything. Not of being able to hold his own in hand-to-hand, not of being able to hold a gun, and definitely not to be able to take the piss out of enemy sorcerers. It was why Arthur had stashed one of his guns in the small of Merlin's back, where it wasn't just hidden, it was _drowned_ under Merlin's too-big hoodie that hung over his skinny jeans.

Arthur had opted for jeans and a button-down over a T-shirt -- not quite posh, but not quite slumming it, either; and he hadn't been particularly inclined to dress up for something that might end up dirty work -- which, from the sounds of things, was exactly what it was going to be.

The warehouse wasn't strictly a warehouse. There were windows along the second level, and Kay had said he hadn't made much of a secret of taking a walk-around, figuring that he'd be seen either way, and that, well, they were expected so it wasn't much of a challenge to sneak around. There was a metal door at the obvious front entrance, and on the metal door was a sliding peephole that was wide enough for a pizza box and tall enough to stick the muzzle of a gun through.

Perceval banged on the door. The peephole slid open. "Names?"

"Arthur Pendragon and company," Gwaine said, tilting his head back to indicate Arthur.

"Yeah, we're expecting you lot." The sound of chains and deadbolts and sliding locks came right before the loud squeak of the door creaking open. The doorman was slight and bony and not the least bit intimidating with the beginnings of a beer paunch hanging over his too-tight Batman shirt, but there were black tribal tattoos all the way down both arms intermingled with Celtic runes and symbols that Arthur immediately picked out as Ogham. "Down that way. Follow the noise. Can't miss it."

They were stopped, predictably enough, halfway down the corridor by a pair of brutes and chainlink fencing. Unlike the man at the door, these two were burlier, more like street toffs who looked as if they would sooner tag graffiti on the nearest overpass or subway car than to act as enforcers for the NWO. "Weapons. Turn them over," one of them said. They patted down Perceval and Bohrs to be on the safe side, even after the group (except Merlin) turned over their most glaring guns, but didn't bother with the rest of them, which suited Arthur just fine.

Kay couldn't have described the scene any better. There were twenty people milling around, plus or minus a spare guard; it was quick work to spot Freya, who was the only woman in the warehouse, looking ill at ease even though everyone else treated her with deference. Bryn was a few feet away from Freya, talking to someone whose back was to Arthur; from the frame, the pressed jeans and the sports jacket, Arthur assumed it was Tristan. Will was there, too, standing next to Freya, arms crossed over his chest awkwardly, cradling one arm more than the other, keeping his face in the shadows, his head down, his stance guarded. There was a narrow strip of surgical tape across his nose -- probably from the A&E. Merlin felt a twinge of sympathy. Kay had broken his nose after all.

The rest of the people milling about were all men identified by the Directory as members of the pyramid working directly below Bryn, and by default, below Tristan as well. They paused in their quiet conversations to glance at the new arrivals, but otherwise turned away, disinterested.

It was **Fight Club** on steroids, if there was ever such a thing, because they'd splurged for a full steel cage instead of the cheaper chainlink. The lighting was high in the ceiling but set on a low, yellow glow that was meant to be dirty and gritty the way the taverns in old-style cowboy Westerns were dirty and gritty. The cement under their feet scuffed with rubber marks, gravel, and rose-coloured sand -- except Arthur didn't think that they imported pink sand for the décor, and that it was more whatever dirt that they had on hand to mop up the blood and keep it from staining the floor.

"I have a bad feeling," Merlin said next to him. That was English for _there's magic in the room_.

"No shite," Gwaine said.

Bryn gestured in their direction, and the man he was talking to turned around. 

Tristan Heynes was one of those slick-and-polish blokes, the ones always done up in the whole overdone metrosexual look. His hair was salon-styled (probably done earlier that day), his clothing fresh-pressed and fashion-coordinated, and there was enough flash on him to pay the gross national debt of a small country. He was good-looking in the sharp, pinched look of a weasel, with flat cheekbones, a long, long nose, a small mouth and a cleft chin, with dark hair, dark eyes, and an artificial tan that was a bit too much on the orange side.

He eyed Arthur up and down, taking in Perceval and Bohrs, Kay and Gwaine, the way that Merlin stuck close to Arthur's side, his eyes downcast, screaming _don't want to be here, want to be back at home watching a bad movie_ in the clearest body language that Arthur had ever seen. 

Tristan gestured to a group of men. "Check them out."

That was when Freya noticed them, finally; she shouted out "Merlin!" but Merlin turned his head away from her. Will started forward, stepping enough in the light for Arthur to see that he'd had himself a go at the cage -- if not earlier this same evening, then certainly sometime in the last few days. Arthur wondered what they'd promised Will.

"Freya," Bryn snapped, and Freya put her hands over her mouth to quiet herself. Will stopped, too, his scowl deepening when he saw that Merlin was practically hiding behind Arthur.

Arthur didn't spend any more time with them, because three men had stopped in front of them. The man in the lead was a Darren Brown clone -- he even had the magician's posturing down pat, raising his hands as if he were about to levitate the group off the ground. He spoke a spell -- it was so long that Arthur nearly snapped that _if he were going to be serenaded, it should be in English and by a better-looking bloke_ \-- and suppressed the involuntary shudder when the Brown-clone's eyes flashed a fiery orange shade. It was a brief glow, nothing like Merlin's bright, gorgeous gold, and the aftereffect was the shudder of hands groping all over his body.

The way Merlin nearly leapt out of his skin, clinging to Arthur, told him that the others had been felt-up in the same way.

"They're clean," Brown-clone said. "No microphones, no cameras, unless you count their phones. I've turned them off."

Bohrs gave in to temptation first and squawked a confirmation when he found that his phone was indeed off. None of the rest of them bothered to check.

"I can sense magic on them, though," said a smaller man behind them. Arthur hadn't noticed him casting any spells earlier, but considering the distraction of the Brown-clone's waving arms and guttural chanting, it was no small wonder. Arthur tensed slightly, hoping that the magic he was sensing wasn't the magic of the bond between himself and Merlin, relaxing only when the man said, "They're wearing charms."

"Hand them over," Bryn said.

"Rather not," Arthur said.

They stared at each other for a long time. He didn't see any indication that the other people in the room were particularly alarmed, or even that they'd surge forward to attack them, but if there were sorcerers, there was no telling what they would be able to do. If Arthur was being generous, there were at least three sorcerers -- and one of them was Bryn.

"What kind of charms?" Tristan asked, sounding amused. 

The sorcerer behind the Brown-clone squinted his eyes in concentration, and he said, "Minor protection charms. Deflectors. Good ones, though. The magic's fresh, so they won't be easy to break. You want me to --"

"No, don't bother. They can keep them," Tristan said, walking over. He stopped in front of Arthur. "You didn't even flinch. Your men tensed up like they were ready for a fight. You barely blinked when Shaw here cast his spell. You're not surprised. You know about magic, and you're fine with it. Tell me, Mister Pendragon. How come you know about magic?"

Arthur didn't answer. 

It was Kay who spoke up, his voice low and gruff, slipping into the street toff accent Arthur had thought -- had hoped -- that Kay would slip into again. "You see some right fucked up bollocks on the battlefield. Things that don't make sense. Bullets goin' awry, natives comin' at us with Stone Age weapons an' throwin' fire and brimstone w't nothin' but the bare backside of their hands.

"See it enough, you start piecin' two and two. Drag out a few of the natives, feed them plenty of knuckle butties -- don't take long before they quit w't the ramblin' about Allah and Mohammed an' start w't the dust devils an' the efreet and the djiini an' how there's sufi, an' then there's _Sufi_." Kay paused for a moment. "'Course we know. Your bloke there wasn't subtle at his flat neither. In case you haven't noticed, we're none of us thick."

Kay nodded toward Bryn.

Tristan's gaze drifted from Arthur to Kay to the rest of the group, and Arthur could only imagine the expressions on all their faces. Tristan turned thoughtful, his face relaxing. "No, it appears not. And the charms? Where did you get them from?"

Arthur didn't miss how Tristan's gaze drifted to Merlin.

"Your uncle, wasn't it? He's the one who dabbled, if I remember correctly --"

"Sod off, Tristan," Merlin snapped. "I knew a few people, orright?"

Arthur decided that even if he didn't already know all that he did know about Tristan, that he wouldn't have liked Tristan anyway. There wasn't much that would make Merlin's Cambridge conditioning slip that badly and so suddenly. Merlin hadn't come right out and told Arthur about Tristan, but he assumed that it was very much along the same lines of how he'd known Bryn.

Bullies, the lot of them. Self-entitled, cocky arseholes who thought it was their God-given right to rule the world -- which made them the perfect foot soldiers for the NWO.

Tristan took a long look at Merlin, and he looked over the group of them again before setting his gaze on Arthur again. This time, his eyes narrowed, as if he were re-evaluating, coming to some sort of understanding. Finally, he crooked a finger and invited Arthur to follow him. 

_Follow him, nothing_ , Arthur decided, and he walked side-by-side with Tristan, who led them both to the cage.

"Merlin's told you about us," Tristan began, and it was a question couched in a statement, because he went on, "About our plans to stop the monopoly that the older generation has, the complicated snarl that's the worldwide financial ticker, getting the right people where they need to be."

"He did," Arthur confirmed.

"Did he tell you how we plan to achieve that goal?" Tristan answered his own question a breath later. "We're bringing back the old ways. Eliminating the infrastructure. Electricity, technology, industry -- it's the great equalizer, making us all the same when none of us are the same. The Internet makes everyone an instant genius, the right arse-kissing by the wrong person propels them to the head of a company, and having the latest toy in your pocket turns you into the king of the hill until someone else with the newest version comes along. Get rid of all these things, all those crutches, and only the best of us have a leg to stand on."

"Hm," Arthur said.

"And the best of us, it appears," Tristan said, glancing at Arthur and over his shoulder at Merlin and the others, "Includes men like you. In the right position, in the right place, with the right people and knowledge and abilities behind them."

They were at the cage. Arthur turned to face Tristan. "That's how you're selling this? Delusions of world domination? And how do you plan on taking on the planet?"

"Don't worry about that," Tristan said. "What you should worry about is what will come after."

"War," Arthur said without thinking about it -- because he didn't need to, not when it had been on his mind ever since hearing about the NWO in the first place. Without power, without communication, without money, the entire planet would immediately regress from panic to civil unrest to outright war, with governments pointing finger in every direction and threatening violent repercussions while trying to restore the very same infrastructure that the NWO was going to be tearing out from under them. The casualties would be high, and would grow higher every day. There would be no recovering from the proverbial apocalypse.

"You catch on fast," Tristan said, approval in his voice.

"What's your time-frame?" Arthur asked.

Tristan smiled thinly. "Soon."

"How soon?" Before Tristan could avoid the question, Arthur pressed on, "Because you're promising me what's mine by birthright within three months, but what fat lot of good will it do me if you do whatever twinkle-fingered abracadabra bollocks to shut down the planet in four? At which point, we get back to my original problem. What's in this for me?"

"Everything," Tristan said with a thin, rodent's smile. "You'll have plenty of time to reconfigure your company's manufacturing plants to supply us -- or anyone with the gold to pay for it -- with enough armaments for the war. More than enough time to make sure that there are alternative types of weapons for you and your men to use when we run out of bullets. More than enough time to establish yourself among our ranks as someone we'd want in a fight. And when we emerge victorious on the other end, you'll be among those we'll place in positions of power to help maintain our control."

Tristan paused under the pretence of letting Arthur think about it, when it was obvious that Arthur really wouldn't have a choice in the end.

"And if it all goes to shite?" Arthur asked mildly.

"It won't," Tristan said, and every line of him, from body language to verbal cues to the way he met Arthur's eyes, was a clear indicator of how much he believed his own words.

"I'm not a foot soldier," Arthur said. There was enough indignation -- _real_ indignation -- in his voice that Tristan smirked, knowing he'd hit a sore point with Arthur.

Tristan dipped his head in acknowledgement. "You have an interesting track record. You lead interesting men."

Arthur glanced toward Will, shooting him a dark look.

"Oh, don't look at him. He's not the one who pulled your files. We have men and women everywhere," Tristan said. "In the end, it's not going to matter if you were a Captain or a General in the army. It's going to matter if you can survive in a world when you have no modern weapons."

Arthur looked at him hard, dread pooling in the bottom of his belly. 

"If you want to be one of us, if you want to survive what's coming, you have to prove to us that you're worthy."

Tristan turned around and reached for something Arthur couldn't see. There was the sound of metal against metal, and when he turned around, he was holding up a sword by the crosspiece, the blade pointing toward the ground.

With his free arm, Tristan gestured toward the cage.

  
**ooOOoo**   


"You're bloody mad to do this," Merlin said.

"Shut up, Merlin," Arthur said. He was his usual quiet, controlled self -- the calm right before the storm, Merlin recognized -- focused and concentrating on his strategy for the fight ahead, if he had a strategy at all. For all of Arthur's stoic, placid demeanour, they might as well be going out on the battlefield as a full team, armed to the gills, against innumerable foes, confident that they would win if only because they had a plan. Because they were following Arthur's plan.

Merlin tried to draw strength from this knowledge, this routine, this ritual -- except he was more inclined to biting off his fingernails right now.

They had been led to a dressing room doubled as an armoury, and Arthur had been told to select whatever he liked for the fight. There were no weapons in this room -- Tristan had magnanimously declared that Arthur would have his choice right before entering the ring -- but there were bits and pieces of every layer of armour someone could possibly want, from hardened leather body pieces to a full chainmail surcoat to padded undergarments and plate armour so beaten and battered, _no one_ could fit in them now, even if they had been able to fit in them in the first place. The best plate couldn't be mass-produced to fit a general body type -- for it to be even halfway useful, it needed to be custom-built for a person. None of the armour in the room looked as if it had been custom built for _anyone_.

_"I'll have one of my men assist you with the armour," Tristan said. There was such a nasty smirk on his lips that Merlin thought the worst, and immediately stepped forward._

_"No, I'll do it," Merlin said._

_"You, Merlin?" Tristan said, his smile going from nasty to amused, and he raised a brow. "Do you even know the difference between a vambrance and a pair of bracers?"_

_Merlin felt his cheeks flush red with embarrassment. "Probably better than you."_

_"And how's that?"_

_"Used to squire for the fights at the Fayre, didn't he?" Will said. He looked terrible, drawn and exhausted, in great pain but struggling to hide it, but the mockery in his voice was no different than usual, because Will had_ always teased Merlin whenever the Fayre came around.

 _Arthur turned to look at Merlin then, his eyebrow quirked in_ were you ever going to tell me that _, his lips in a thin line torn between laughter and curiosity. Merlin ignored him and turned to Will, his cheeks hot. "Did well enough for you when you decided you wanted to have a go to impress the girls --"_

_"Strapped me in so much bloody armour I could barely walk onto the field," Will said, glancing at Tristan with a grin. "Forfeited that round when I swung the sword, lost my footing, and couldn't get up."_

_"Were like a turtle, stuck on his back, legs and arms wriggling in the air," Merlin said, laughing a little. Then he caught himself and forced a frown, pointing a finger at Will. "Oi, I'm still pissed with you."_

_Will held up his hands with the knowledge that all would be forgiven given enough time. Tristan looked between the two of them, and put a hand on Merlin's shoulder that Merlin wanted desperately to slide away from. "It sounds as if Will could have used you a few days ago. Perhaps then he wouldn't have been beaten as badly as he was --"_

_"I tripped," Will protested. "Plus, who maintains that crap anyway? The hinge on my helm was rusted shut, couldn't bloody see --"_

_Will's ramble drifted to silence under Tristan's withering glare. "Only a dishonourable man blames his tools."_

_"Lucky for me then, they weren't_ my _tools," Will said. Tristan raised a brow; Will held up one hand and shrugged. "Whatever you say."_

_"You have half an hour to get him ready, Merlin," Tristan said, and nodded at one of his men, who led them to the back of the warehouse where there were some private dressing rooms._

"Shite," Merlin said, pacing in place, rubbing his hands on his face. Gwaine and Perceval were right outside; Kay and Bohrs had stayed in the main room as surety against escape -- not that there _was_ any escape. Merlin checked. There were no windows, unless the little porthole counted, but none of them would be able to get through unless he turned them all into mice.

He was seriously considering it at the moment.

"Shite," Merlin said again.

"You're wasting time, Merlin," Arthur said.

"'Course I'm wasting time! This is _stupid_ \--" Merlin stopped and walked into Arthur's space. "Have you even done something like this before? Have you any _idea_ what it's like? It's not like the Kendo you've been having us do --"

" _Mer_ lin." Arthur grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "You're not the only one who's been to a Fayre."

Merlin stilled. His brows pinched, and his mouth made a small little moue. "You've been to a Fayre. Yes, excellent, you've watched --"

"I've _participated_ ," Arthur corrected, and Merlin's brows raised all the way to his hairline. "Now get me in the armour. Light chain, pauldron, vambraces, greaves."

Merlin stared stupidly at him, trying to process the information. Arthur had _participated_? He knew _the names of the different parts of armour_? He must have stood around for far too long, because Arthur turned around and snapped his fingers in front of his face.

"Anytime today, _Mer_ lin," Arthur said.

"In a second. I'm savouring the mental image of you in full plate armour. Did you have a horse? Tell me you had a horse --" Merlin laughed softly. "Gods, you're a _geek_ \-- you've been to a Fayre?"

"It was just the once, and it was more of a re-enactment than anything. Leon, Gwaine, Perce and I. Gwaine wanted the mead, Perce wanted the mutton, Leon was bloody besotted, following after Morgana in her period dress, her tits right up in her neck. Gwaine dared me to try my hand on the field, so I went, and got my arse handed to me." 

"Oh, that doesn't reassure me one bit," Merlin said. Arthur took items out of his pockets -- wallet, cell phone, cash -- and stuffed the items into Merlin's jeans. The only thing he kept was the charmed pendant -- he put that around his neck.

"They had to carry me home. The Colonel took one look at me, bloodied and bruised, expounded his usual _no son of mine is going to lose against a bunch of pansies in codpieces_ bollocks --"

Merlin snorted back a laugh. "He said _codpieces_?"

"He said _codpieces_ ," Arthur said. He took Merlin's arm, and fastened his watch around Merlin's wrist next to Merlin's watch. "Enrolled me in a three-week field course at the EMA Academy in Germany, then sent me to another Fayre right before uni started that fall."

The European Martial Arts Academy -- Merlin remembered hearing about it, back when Will was as serious about a bird as he was ever going to get -- was a special retreat for re-enactment buffs, specializing in the Western fighting styles that were the sword play of medieval times. It was expensive and brutal, and Will fortunately bagged the girl before he forked over a couple thousand pounds for nearly a month's worth of beatings. "I can't believe you went there."

"Uther sent me everywhere else," Arthur said with a shrug. Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, Thai Boxing, _savate_ , _capoeira_ \-- it seemed that Arthur had at least a passing knowledge of most martial arts, specializing in a select few, and now Merlin could add yet another to the long list of things that Arthur seemed to know.

He hoped that Arthur was at least halfway-decent with a sword. It would be awful if he wasn't. Merlin watched Arthur unbutton his shirt and took it when Arthur handed it to him. He rolled it up and stuffed it inside his hoodie; they weren't going to leave any personal belongings behind. "And?"

"And what?"

"Did you win?"

"It was nearly fifteen years ago, Merlin," Arthur said, stretching his arms and shoulders. "Will you hurry up?"

Merlin scowled and went around the room. He found a padded undershirt of coarse material that wasn't as rank as the others and helped Arthur into it before going to weight some of the shorter chainmail surcoats, finally selecting one that came at about mid-thigh. Putting on the armour that Arthur requested, piece by piece, was more a matter of finding matching combinations that _fit_ him in the first place. 

When he was done, Merlin took a step back, biting his lower lip. He had a chilling flashback to a few nights ago, when he'd had that odd vision of Arthur in medieval armour and embroidered, royal cloak. If he squinted, Arthur looked nearly as regal. Well, as much as he could while wearing jeans and armour that stank of stale sweat.

"Do you want a helm?"

"No."

"You sure? If you get hit in the head --"

"You heard Will. They're in shite shape. I want to be able to see my opponent," Arthur said, and it was only until Arthur pointed it out that Merlin realized that Will had been _warning_ them. "Did you find gauntlets?"

Merlin tried on a few himself before he found a pair that might fit Arthur; Arthur's hands were broader than his own, the fingers just as long, but thicker and stronger. They were hardened leather, with metal plates sewn in on the back to protect the fingers and knuckles and extra strips of boiled leather on the palms. "Try these."

"Should do." Arthur pulled them on, squeezing his hands together. He pulled the gauntlets off an instant later, tucked them under an armpit, and removed the ring he always wore when he wasn't on active duty in the back-end of someone's desert. "Here. Hold on to this."

"I'll probably lose it," Merlin said with a frown.

"Then _put it on_ ," Arthur said, with no small bit of exasperation. Merlin rolled his eyes and put it on every finger of his left hand until he found one it wouldn't slip from. Sadly, it wasn't his ring finger.

"Happy now?"

"Yes," Arthur said, grinning broadly.

Merlin's eyes narrowed. "You're getting this back, you know."

"Of course I am," Arthur said, schooling his expression to seriousness.

"I mean it," Merlin said, poking a finger into Arthur's chest only to shake his hand out when he bruised his fingertip on the chainmail. He looked at the chainmail, wondering if Arthur would notice -- or care -- if he put a protection spell on it, just for the night. 

"Of that I have no doubt," Arthur said. His soft smile disappeared, and he frowned thoughtfully. He pulled Merlin closer, a hand behind his head, and pressed his lips against Merlin's cheek. "Merlin. Whatever happens, _do not_ help me. Do not do anything."

Merlin jerked away. "But if --"

"Promise me," Arthur said, holding him in place. "I'm wearing the pendant. I'll be fine."

"You can't. You can't rely on that, Arthur, we don't know how it'll hold up to --" There were magic users in the building -- if anyone thought that they weren't going to try magic on Arthur to keep him from winning, well, they were something of stupid.

"I'm not, and I won't. I can dodge the overt spells. The pendant will take care of the subtle. Under no circumstance are you to out yourself because you can't help it, you understand me? Promise me, Merlin."

Merlin pressed his lips tightly together. "Did you win that second fight at the Fayre?"

Arthur took a step back to look at him, raising a brow. "Is there ever any doubt? Of course I did. Have some faith in me."

"Yeah, yeah," Merlin said. An absurd amount of relief rush through him until he remembered that Arthur's EMA training had been _fifteen years ago_ and he probably hadn't done any of it since. "Have all the faith in the world in you. It's _them_ I'm worried about."

Arthur gave him a sharp nod. "They'll be bringing you to the balcony to watch. Probably use you to try to distract me. Kay will stay with you, all right?"

"Yeah, all right," Merlin said, taking a deep breath. 

"If you can, get your phone to work, signal the others," Arthur said.

" _If_ I can? Seriously? I can do anything," Merlin said, flashing a weak grin. He was startled out of Arthur's arms by a loud banging, and one of Bryn's men -- for the occasion they were under Tristan's orders -- came in.

"They're waiting."

Merlin picked up the gauntlets that had fallen to the floor when Arthur grabbed him, handed them over, and followed Arthur out.

Tristan was in the open area, standing next to Bryn and several other men. Freya and Will were off to the side -- Freya looked tired, for all that she seemed to shimmer with an undertone of outrage, while Will glowered at everyone with his usual expression of _intense boredom_. Tristan took a long look at Arthur, glancing over at Merlin, and smirked.

"Not a half-bad job you did there, Merlin," Tristan said.

"Like I said before, sod off, Tristan," Merlin said. Tristan scowled.

"Does he talk to you like that?" Tristan asked, nodding at Arthur.

Arthur glanced at Merlin and smirked. "I have other uses for his mouth."

Tristan coughed in something that might have been discomfort while Merlin flushed red, the heat making his face burn. Behind him, Gwaine chuckled, low and teasing, and Merlin huffed, glaring over his shoulder.

"All right, let's. Um." Tristan's cultivated posh demeanour slipped, and he took a steadying breath. "Let's go over the rules, shall we? This isn't a boxing match. This isn't ultimate fighting. This isn't for points and it's not for time. There are no rounds. You fight until someone yields, or someone dies."

"Hey, no, you didn't say anything about --" Merlin surged forward, intending on forfeiting right then and there. Arthur's eyes snapped to him; they were cold, stony, icy, granitic. Merlin stopped dead and took several scurrying steps back. 

"Shut up, Merlin." Arthur gestured to Kay. "Stay with him."

Kay put a hand on Merlin's shoulder and murmured something that Merlin didn't hear.

Tristan paused, looking between Merlin and Arthur and back again. His expression shifted as if he was understanding something that he hadn't understood before. 

"Your opponent in the ring will be using a sword as his weapons. You may or may not be attacked by other unseen forces," Tristan said. There was a tone of absurd glee in his voice. "You can pick your weapon from among those along the wall."

Merlin followed where Tristan pointed. There were any number of weapons from hundreds of years ago -- and they looked it, too. There were axes, polearms, halberds, broadswords, short swords, maces, war hammers, some manner of curved blades that reminded Merlin of handheld scythe or scimitars or even Turkish cavalry swords, staves that made him think of Little John from Robin Hood and clubs that wouldn't look out of place in a Neanderthal's hand. It wasn't a comprehensive collection -- if anything, it looked like a weapons dump. It didn't look as if any of the weapons had been cared for any better than the armour.

"Once you have your weapon, enter the ring and wait at the far corner. Your opponent will be by shortly. The battle begins when I ring the bell." Tristan waited to see if Arthur had any questions, but Arthur only nodded. Tristan turned, smiled at Merlin as if they were lifelong best friends -- Merlin vomited a little in his mouth -- and held out his hand in invitation. "We'll be able to watch better from above."

Exactly as Arthur predicted.

 _Fucking hell. When this is over, I'm testing Arthur for magic._ He'd thought that it was uncanny when Arthur could guess enemy manoeuvres on the battlefield, but it was ridiculous when he was so accurate he must be _reading minds_. Merlin glanced over his shoulder as Tristan led him away, but Arthur had already gone to the weapons, Perceval with him, the two checking out whatever was available. Kay was right behind Merlin, nodding grimly in encouragement.

Merlin caught himself thumbing Arthur's ring, twisting it round and round, doing a bad job of covering up his anxiety.

"Over here, Merlin," Tristan said, waving him over.

Merlin came to stand next to Tristan by the banister in what was the perfect spot looking down into the ring. Bryn was on Tristan's other side while Freya lingered in the background before Bryn growled at her to come forward, wrapping an arm over her thin shoulders. Kay shared a long, meaningful glance with Will -- there was a brief pointed-finger gun-shot from Kay at Will, the significance clear, _not done with you, mate_ that Will responded in kind with a grin -- before going to stand some distance away, one elbow over the banister. Will stopped beside Merlin, but Merlin ignored him.

Down below, Arthur and Perceval had found a longsword that had seen better days but wasn't half as nicked and dinged as the other blades.

"So, Merlin," Tristan drawled, "What have you been up to these days? Something's keeping you so busy that you can't work on the assignments Bryn and Freya send you?"

"Nothing," Merlin said flatly. "And, none of your business."

"Is that some way to talk to an old friend? We haven't seen each other in, what, how long has it been?" Tristan glanced over his shoulder at Bryn, as if he would have the number at his fingertips. Bryn spread his hands and shrugged.

"Hasn't been long enough," Merlin said. "Could do without having seen you for the rest of my life."

Tristan's expression pinched, his nostrils flared, and he ducked his head in anger. "Grown a spine, hasn't he?" Tristan said, speaking to no one in particular.

"Grown a spine and then some," Bryn agreed, pointing down to the ring below. Arthur was at the other side of the cage, looking around warily; after a few minutes of nothing, he raised his eyes and spread his arms in a _what are you waiting for_ gesture. "He's to blame. I told you, Tris. Merlin won't do anything without Pendragon's say-so."

"I'm sure we can take care of that tonight," Tristan said, and Merlin whirled to glare at him, murderous.

"You lay one fucking hand on him --"

"And you'll do what?"

"I'll. I'll." Merlin pinched off any number of useless threats along the lines of _I'll turn you into the bloody rodent you are_ , _I'll personally introduce you to your own arsehole_ and _I'll dunk your head down the loo and flush, see how you like it when it's being done to you_ , but any of them would only serve to betray Merlin's magic and Merlin's military background. So, instead, as Tristan's smirk grew wider and wider, Merlin blurted out, "I'll bloody well tank your code --"

Tristan's eyes narrowed and he came into Merlin's space. Merlin found himself averting his eyes, turning his head away. He wasn't a frightened boy anymore, trying to avoid the ire of the schoolyard bullies. He'd never been a frightened boy -- only cautious, insanely cautious, because his Mum told him all the time that he needed to be careful, that he couldn't let other people find out that he had magic, and he couldn't hurt them either because he didn't know who else would find out and how they would react. But he'd still been a boy, bullied and pushed around, his underpants painfully torn from him while he was still wearing his trousers, his head shoved down the loo at least once a week if Will wasn't there to give Merlin someone to hide behind, his lunch money stolen nearly every other day -- and if he didn't have any money they took the sandwich his Mum had made instead.

He couldn't quite suppress the nigh instinctive reaction to cower, to tremble, to look for an escape route. He could barely suppress his desire to fight back -- his _need_ to fight back, to pummel Tristan and Bryn and the others in their miserable rag-tag group of self-made toffs and to act as Karma's conduit as these men, these scum of the earth, finally got what was coming to them.

Now was not the time, he reminded himself. Not now. Not now.

"You'll do no such thing," Tristan said. His voice was steady and controlled, the way he'd never been in school, and that gave him an extra edge that Merlin didn't remember him having. "You'll..."

The threat died on Tristan's lips, and he looked past Merlin at where Kay was standing, one elbow on the railing, knocking the wood with the knuckle of the other. He stopped knocking when he had Tristan's attention, and raised a finger in a wagging no-no gesture. Tristan pulled away, tugging at the lapels of his sports jacket, brushing down his shirt with the flat of his hand. He turned abruptly, leaning over the railing, and called out, "Bring him in."

Merlin glanced past Will at Kay. Kay gave him a small nod. Merlin didn't try to hide his shaky breath. He was sure that made it seem as if he was still in his teens, awkward and ungainly and uncoordinated, with every escape route burned in his brain. If it made Tristan think he still had power over Merlin, if it meant that Merlin maintained his cover, then he could put up with the humiliation, but one day --

 _Fuck._ Merlin had never wanted to hit someone so badly. Will probably guessed it, too, because he put a hand on Merlin's shoulder and squeezed.

Merlin glanced at Will gratefully, then promptly shrugged his arm off. "Don't fucking touch me."

He walked away from the railing, digging into his hoodie, pulling out his phone. It was off. He turned it back on, but it was slow to load, sputtering and angry, and he had the sick feeling that it might give him the proverbial Blue Screen of Death any moment now.

Merlin looked up to see Freya looking at him pityingly, at Bryn's nasty cut of a smirk across his face. "You're not going to get a signal in here even if you manage to turn it on."

"Where have you been? I'm a fucking genius," Merlin said.

Bryn snorted.

"Mister Pendragon," Tristan said, raising his voice to be heard in the quiet din below, "Meet your opponent, Vincent Friesenhahn."

The name made Merlin's head snap up. He rushed to the railing, this time putting Will between him and Tristan, and looked down. Friesenhahn was only a little taller than Arthur, narrower of shoulder and build; unlike Arthur, he was wearing solid plate mail that looked as if it had been moulded straight off of his body and pounded until it fit him to perfection. He had a helm on his head with a nose plate that hid most of his face, but there was no forgetting the bright green surcoat and pretentious fleur-de-lys embroidered in silver across his broad back.

"Friesenhahn?" Merlin hissed, glancing at Will with wide eyes. "They've got bloody Friesenhahn?"

"Don't tell me, mate. I met him on the other side of a rusty blade the other day," Will said. "Still can't feel my arm proper."

"Fucking hell," Merlin said. He nearly lunged at Tristan, but Kay stopped him.

"Who is he?"

"Joust champ in South Glamorgan a few years back," Will said. Kay immediately grimaced, his expression darkening as Will continued. "Top battlefield re-enactor. He knows his way around that bastard sword --"

"Broad sword --"

"If I say it's a bastard sword, it's a bastard sword, because it's a fucking bastard behind it," Will snapped, glancing from Merlin to Kay before continuing. "Hits like a ten-ton demolition ball. Was lucky to last a full round with him."

"Ready!" Tristan called out, and he rang the bell.

Arthur and Friesenhahn circled each other, swords at the ready. They completed a half tour of the cage before Friesenhahn lunged forward with an overhand attack. Arthur sidestepped smoothly, keeping his sword steady, but didn't fall for the faked opening that Friesenhahn had given him. Merlin had seen Friesenhahn at the medieval jousts during staged re-enactments, and he wasn't one to follow choreography. Will was right, Friesenhahn was a bastard. An old, experienced bastard wearing four stone of armour and carrying a sword that didn't suit his height or his arm. He wouldn't have half of Arthur's stamina or speed, and Merlin hoped fervently that it would be in Arthur's advantage. Nearly a minute passed -- Friesenhahn chasing after Arthur around the cage -- before Friesenhahn had Arthur pinned down. He swung his arms up in a quick overhead strike, and Arthur raised his sword to block.

The first clash of swords made Merlin's teeth rattle. He closed his eyes and turned away.

Merlin _didn't_ want to look away. He wanted to watch Arthur. He wanted to _see_ what was happening. But his magic coiled and roiled and snapped and snarled inside him, responding to Merlin's growing anxiety, and it wanted to reach out and enfold Arthur in the very same protection that Arthur told him not to lay down.

He felt an arm around his shoulders, could smell Will's familiar cologne. Will led him away from the railing, out of earshot. The only people paying any attention to Merlin was Freya, whose brow furrowed in sympathetic concern, and Kay, who watched Will evenly, keeping his attention on Merlin despite the distraction of the fight below.

"He'll be all right," Will said, his voice low. "As long as he puts on a good show, is all. He won't get killed, just battered about -- this is one of their games, you know the ones? Make themselves bigger than they are by proving that they're the ones in control, that they're the ones with the superior forces and the superior manpower, and Arthur's nothing compared to them --"

"Arthur's --"

"Shut it, Merls," Will hissed. "Just listen. You're in, the both of you. The whole bloody team if that's what you want. It's been cleared from on-high. Freya overheard Bryn having a meltdown over the phone when the order came down. They're making you Gen Twos, as top of the food chain as top of the food chain gets, equal footing with Bryn and Tris and the rest, all conditional on a passable performance tonight, providing you follow through on an assignment that you'll get before the week is out.

"But them?" Will tossed his head backward, indicating Tristan and Bryn. "Them, they're bitter plonkers. _They_ were supposed to get more authority. _They_ were supposed to get a big chunk of London. _They_ were supposed to hear about the next stage, but instead it's going to Arthur. They're putting Arthur through the wringer while they still can, because after this, after tonight -- the two of you are someone else's problem, and lucky you, Tristan and Bryn? They'll become your lapdogs. So in the meantime, they'll humiliate him, and if they can prove that he's not worthy while they're at it, then all the better, because they're going to _try_ to get him kicked out before he's even in --"

There was a shout, a tumultuous roar from the small group of men down below. Merlin whipped around and broke away from Will, running to the railing, but whatever it was, he'd missed it. Down below, Arthur and Friesenhahn circled each other warily.

"Man's left leg is dragging," Kay commented quietly. 

"Does Arthur know that?" Merlin asked. His fingers clutched the railing in a death grip, fingernails digging into the wood.

"Oh, he knows," Kay said with a sharp nod. "Like he knows the man can't raise his left arm as high as his right, never mind the twitchy right knee. Should've been retired ages ago. But that's not the problem."

Merlin followed Kay's glance to a pair of men standing outside the cage. They weren't watching the fight; they were watching Tristan. And when Tristan nodded --

The two men started speaking -- their lips moved, but Merlin couldn't hear what they were saying. He didn't think anyone could over the roar of people shouting and clapping and the clash of swords clanging together. The two men spread their hands surreptitiously, their eyes flashed a burnished orange -- 

Merlin felt the magic rise, his own magic flaring up in response. He bit his lower lip, seeing _intent_ and _result_ before the spell was even released, and started to raise a hand in desperate, instinctive need to counter the spell before it struck Arthur. 

Almost at the same time, Will appeared next to Merlin, elbow on the railing, shielding Merlin from Bryn and Tristan with his body; Kay shifted his stance, looking away as if disinterested, jabbing a sharp elbow at Merlin's ribs before he could cast --

It was enough of a reminder that Merlin couldn't do anything without being caught, not with this many sorcerers around. They would sense unknown magic, they might even be capable and sufficiently competent to track it back to Merlin. And Arthur -- _damn him_ \-- had made Merlin promise not to use any magic during the fight, no matter what the reason.

Merlin suppressed the distracted wave of magic threatening to blow downwards and knock everyone off their feet -- everyone except Arthur -- and wavered on uncertain legs while he rode the crest of magic and waited for it to abate. It crashed and pounded at him, wanting to be released, wanting to _save Arthur_ \--

The sorcerers' spells washed over Arthur -- past him, around him, through him -- the wasted energy impacting with the cage behind Arthur, creaking and deforming the metal with a loud _thump_. Friesenhahn followed through with his blow, swinging fruitlessly, pausing to glance at the new indentation in the steelwork, distracted for a precious few seconds that Arthur didn't waste. He pressed an advantage, battering at Friesenhahn until he had the other man pressed against the far end of the cage.

"You all right, mate?" Will asked. "You're looking pale."

Kay glanced at him, his eyebrows quirking in the middle in concern and confirmation. Merlin forced a wan smile to his lips, nodding. He was going to give Kathy a big _kiss_ for those pendants of hers when he finally met her. "'M fine."

It was only then that he realized that Bryn and Tristan and Freya were looking at him. Open amusement, barely concealed but still visible amusement, and worry with baggage. Merlin turned his head away, angry.

"Take it easy, Merls," Will said, putting a hand on Merlin's arm. Merlin wrenched his arm away, realizing in that moment that he still held his phone in his hand.

His phone was on. He had power. He didn't have a signal. Sparing a sharp look in Tristan's direction -- _you want to humiliate Arthur? Want to prove him unworthy? Not going to happen. Not if I can help it_ \-- Merlin bent his head over his phone, sliding open the keyboard. He was going to get a message out to Leon if it bloody well _killed him_ \-- and hopefully before anything happened to Arthur.

Suppressing radio signals -- it was a modern tweak to an ancient _stilnes_ spell. The original smoothed out sound waves, counteracting against them, using a mirror sound to muffle and mask footsteps or drifting voices or the rustle of clothing. The newer versions -- the versions that Merlin had studied at the Directory, that he'd worked out on his own while on the battlefield -- all allowed for a subtle variation, a specification of frequency. Radio waves worked over a specific if narrow band of frequencies; cell phones on a much, much broader range It was easy to isolate them, to create the inversion effect that cancelled out the sound waves, the radio waves, the cell phone transmissions, if someone knew the trick of it, if they understood how to manipulate the magic _just so_ \--

It wasn't quite _jamming_ the signal, not like the powerful magic that Merlin had sensed that time in the desert when they were on a sniping expedition to take out the elusive Mordred ap Aneurin, but it wasn't any easier to unravel now as when Merlin had been trying his best to hide his magic from the others.

Every action had a counter reaction, and Merlin was a bloody fucking _genius_ when it came to communications. He knew everything there was to know about technology, about the physics, about the math, and lucky for him, he also knew how the spell worked -- and that the spell was only as good as its caster. Or how smart they were.

Merlin was willing to bet that the spell only covered the most common GSM-1800 cell phone frequencies in the UK -- not the CB bands, not the military bands, not the radio broadcasting bands, or even the so-called Quiet Zone of restricted frequencies. He thumbed through the standard options and waited to connect to a nearby tower. When each failed, he began entering the frequencies that he had memorized.

The only downside to seeing the signal strength bars creep up on the screen was knowing that any call Merlin made now would be on the wrong frequency to call Leon -- but the perfect node for cracking into the private and secure Excalibur network he'd built for the team. If Leon was outside the warehouse right now, he'd be able to hear Merlin loud and clear.

He was going to upgrade everyone's phones for network capability. He didn't know why he didn't think of it before. It wasn't as if everyone wore their earwigs or carried their radios all the time.

He entered the encryption code to get through, and happened to pick that moment to glance down to see how the fight was proceeding.

Merlin immediately wished that he hadn't. There was a bloody patch on the side of Arthur's head -- a drawback of not wearing his helm -- but he was steady and clear-eyed, or as steady and clear-eyed as anyone could get when he had Friesenhahn's sword across his throat. Friesenhahn was using it as his own personal guillotine, and Arthur had dropped his sword somewhere on the other side of the ring. He was using his hands to keep it at bay, and Merlin felt a flare of panic when he saw red seeping through the gauntlets.

Merlin couldn't look away. He couldn't breathe. Some spectre had wrapped its cold hands around Merlin's heart and a ghostly chill was keeping it from beating. He knew Arthur was strong. That he could take it. That he would prevail. He'd been through worse on the battlefield, racked up his share of injuries. He'd been right along with the rest of them, back in the thick of it as quickly as Lance could patch him up. Cuts on the hands wouldn't slow him down.

"Yield!" Friesenhahn barked.

"Do you ejaculate prematurely, too?" Gwaine shouted from the sidelines.

Slowly, slowly, as if he were lifting a barbell with too many extra plates, Arthur pushed on the sword, gaining a precious few centimetres. Friesenhahn leaned in with all his weight, taking advantage the extra weight armour he wore afforded him for exactly this purpose, the grunts of efforts coming in equal measure from both men. Abruptly, Arthur shifted, the sword slipping, the point jamming through the steel bars.

Arthur brought an elbow down on Friesenhahn's arm, connecting with the joint, breaking Friesenhahn's grasp on the hilt of his sword. Arthur's arm stretched out even as he moved forward, clotheslining across Friesenhahn's throat, shoving him away from the sword and tripping him over the ankle hooked behind his leg. throwing him off balance. Arthur followed Friesenhahn down to the ground, one hand clasped to his armour, the other closed in a tight fist of metallic gauntlet and hardened leather, coming down on the exposed part of his helm. 

There was a loud crunch, but Merlin wasn't sure if it was the sound of metal bending or bone breaking, and he had a sick feeling in his stomach when Arthur pulled away suddenly, turning, walking over to pick up his sword with his left hand instead of his right. Friesenhahn, behind him, rolled over onto his side, using the steel cage around them as a ladder, climbing hand over gauntleted hand until he was on his feet. He reached for his sword, yanking it out of the square in a rattle of metal against metal, whirling around wildly --

Friesenhahn was half-blind; the visor crumpled over one eye where Arthur must have dented it -- _somehow_ , because those helms were _tempered steel_ , and _oh gods, his hand must be broken_ \--

Arthur met the swing of Friesenhahn's blade with his own, knocking it aside. Friesenhahn brought it in a wide overhand strike that Arthur deflected easily, and Friesenhahn surged at Arthur, intending to tackle him, only to have to slow his momentum when Arthur moved aside, smooth, quick, like a cat.

Merlin released a held breath. He glanced down at his phone, confirmed the signal strength again, and thumbed in Excalibur's network password and opened a line. He listened to the crackle and buzz until he heard the faint click of connection.

"Leon! Arthur asked me to call."

A startled Tristan and Bryn turned around, wide-eyed, confused, _unsure_. Bryn took out his phone, glanced at the display to confirm that the signal was still down, and breathed out a scoffing laugh. "He's having us on."

"Are you sure about that? I'm a bloody communications expert, remember?" Merlin taunted, scrambling away when Bryn made a grab for him. Kay, quicksilver-fast, stepped between them, and Bryn came to a sudden, awkward, _painful_ stop rather than crash into him. Merlin stayed behind Kay, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

"We've got eyes in, Merlin," Leon answered. "Is Arthur all right?"

Merlin glanced down, and for a comforting moment, he felt a surge of pride for Arthur's strength. It overwhelmed Merlin's low-grade panic enough for him to take a steadying breath and say, "He's holding his own. I think you'd better come in."

"Just taking care of their overwatch right now," Leon said. "Can you confirm the number inside?"

"Oi, Will -- what are you doing just standing there?" Bryn snapped.

"Exactly that, mate. Your boy down there --" Will pointed down at the ring, obviously meaning Friesenhahn, "-- damn near cut off my arm, and this one here --" he jutted his chin toward Kay and said, "-- will take it clean off the rest of the way. You're the ones with the inferiority complex over this whole mess. You deal with them yourself."

Bryn made a small, mocking sound, still not quite believing that Merlin had broken through their magical lockdown.

Merlin kept a wary eye out for Bryn and Tristan and edged toward the railing, looking down. His breath caught in his chest again when he felt a sudden flash of magic in the air. Arthur skid across the floor, shoved by an invisible hand into the path of Friesenhahn's blow. He twisted his body in a show of agility that Merlin hadn't seen outside of **The Matrix** , avoiding the swinging sword by the skin of his teeth. Merlin couldn't help thinking that was going to _hurt_ later, but that thought came and went in a shout when he realized that the sorcerers had figured out how to cast spells _around_ Arthur instead.

Suddenly, Merlin didn't know how to count anymore. He'd known how many of them there were the minute they walked in, but that had gone out the window, and now the only numbers running through his head was some stupid kiddie joke about _seven ate nine_. "Shite. I have to give you to Kay --"

Kay took the phone and didn't wait for prompting. "One on the door, two in the row, four up high but I see you've got your reds on them. A dozen and change downstairs, not sure who's in the back, four on the balcony with me. Yes. On your go."

There was a furious clash of swords down below. Arthur blocked and swung and struck. He ducked and feinted and dodged. It wasn't anything like the fencing match some of Merlin's uni friends dragged him to that one time. Nothing at all like the choreographed battles in the medieval flicks at the cinema. It was rough, fierce, a brutal clang and crash as Friesenhahn was beaten back, step by step.

Kay made a gesture in the air that Merlin didn't catch, but it was Leon's _go_ signal if there was ever one. Gwaine disabled the big man that had been looming over his shoulder with the sharp slap of the butt of his palm up into his chin. Perceval took down two smaller men by slamming their heads together before whirling around for someone else. It was Bohrs who pulled his holdback gun and put the muzzle against the temple of a sorcerer who'd been about to cast a spell on Arthur. A second later, Bohrs clubbed him across the temple to properly and temporarily disable him; the sorcerer crumpled to the ground, and the man besides him held up his hands in a hurry, too alarmed to try anything.

Friesenhahn dropped to one knee, his sword clattering some distance away. Arthur's blade swung high, coming down in an axe-splitting strike, slowing and stopping to barely ding on Friesenhahn's pauldron.

There was activity up in the rafters -- gunners or sorcerers reacting to the unrest below. Four shots pierced through the glass almost simultaneously, warning shots that thudded in woodwork and metal and flooring, and if no one but Kay had noticed the red dots of the laser sights before, they sure noticed them _now_.

Kay pushed the phone into Merlin's hands, casually lifted the back of Merlin's hoodie, and helped himself to the gun that Arthur had hidden in the small of Merlin's back. He flicked off the safety, chambered a round and raised his gun at Bryn and Tristan. 

There was a small smirk on Kay's face. Merlin knew the one. It was the Clint Eastwood _go ahead, make my day_ smile, a cocksure _I can pull the trigger and have a bullet in your brain faster than you can cast your spell_ challenge.

The little bloke from the front door and the men who had done a poor job of checking them for weapons -- likely under the impression that they would be useless in a room full of sorcerers -- were frog-marched into the main room. Another three men came in from the rear of the warehouse, their fingers knotted behind their heads. There was a sweep as most of the team -- Geraint and Galahad were still outside, keeping an eye out, and Lamorak was suffering through a girl's night at Gwen's -- as they filled into the warehouse, checking and clearing every back corner and room.

Tristan's jaw was clenched so tight that if he tried to speak now, it might snap clean off. Bryn's face was blistering with red-hot fury. Freya had moved out of the line of fire not because Bryn shoved her away, but because Kay, being a gentleman, gestured for her to move, and she was wringing her hands, a wild, panicked look in her eyes. Will leaned against the far wall, cradling his arm, still, his eyes sparkling and his mouth quirking, badly wanting to say something that Merlin just _knew_ would be along the lines of _Tristan. Bryn. You fucking wankers. I told you this was going to happen. You don't fuck with someone with Pendragon's record._

Merlin almost smiled.

When the dust settled, all of Tristan and Bryn's men were nose-down on the ground, hands laced behind their heads, and one by one, Pellinor and Bedivere were zip-tying their wrists together and slapping a strip of duct tape over their mouths to keep them docile and secure. The team knew that the most immediate spells needed line of sight and hand gestures and the spoken word, and they were taking away all three options.

Someone had opened the cage. Arthur stepped out, leaving behind a beaten Friesenhahn. Friesenhahn was on his knees, aborting an attempt to stand in favour of toppling his helm from his head and letting it fall to the dirt instead, his heavy panting suddenly heavier now that it wasn't drowned out by the shouts and cheers of the men who had been watching the fight.

Arthur was steady as he walked around, surveying all of the prisoners, making eye contact and nodding at the team, a conqueror surveying his conquests. There was no wobble to Arthur's stride as he made his way to stand in front of the balcony. If he was breathing hard after the bout, it didn't show except in the slight heave of his shoulders and the rise of his chest. 

His hair was sweat-plastered to his forehead except where blood from cuts and scrapes turned his blond hair a russet shade. There were smears of dirt across his brow and nose and cheeks that did more to enhance aristocratic features than to hide the bruises forming along his jaw and temple. He stood straight-backed and proud, unbowed by exhaustion or exertion, resting the tip of his sword down on the cement floor, his gauntleted hands around the hilt. There were clean cuts on the sides of his jeans where Friesenhahn had scored strikes, but more worrisome was the gash in the chainmail where it flapped loose at Arthur's hip.

Arthur turned his head to the side, waiting for the more cantankerous of the prisoners to settle down. A muscle jumped in his jaw, but that was the only sign of emotion beyond his otherwise preternatural calm.

Finally, after what was almost an eternity, Arthur raised his chin to look up on the balcony, squinting one eye against the beads of sweat dripping down his brow. Tristan and Bryn glowered at him.

"You're none of you fit to judge whether I'm worthy," Arthur said, his voice a low, threatening thrum. In the long pause that followed, there was the hint of much more left unspoken, but not unheard -- enemies being made, the promise of vengeance to be wrought upon. In the end, it was Tristan who fidgeted anxiously, Bryn's mouth that opened and closed like a fish gasping for air, and Arthur who nodded with the satisfaction of knowing he had the upper hand. "I'll be expecting Morgause's call."

His gaze drifted to Merlin, dark and intense, and it did _things_ to Merlin. The way Arthur raised his hand and gestured sharply with two fingers, the way his voice curled dangerously around his name --

" _Merlin_."

\-- Merlin responded at once, turning away from Tristan and Bryn, Will and Freya, and hurried down the rickety stairs not because he was playing a part for their undercover roles, but because his jeans were so tight, _too tight_ , and all he could think about was how badly he wanted to shag Arthur right now.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Please contact me for permission before writing anything in the Loaded March AU, or see [here](http://loaded-march.livejournal.com/46614.html) for my stance on derivative works.  
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [one edge (fanart)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/340022) by [Etharei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etharei/pseuds/Etharei)




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